20-30% of your Amazon portfolio is highly unprofitable – and you should probably
By Martin Heubel · October 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
20-30% of your Amazon portfolio is highly unprofitable – and you should probably delist it. ✂️ 🎯
I know it sounds terrifying, but it's the inconvenient truth that many 1P vendors desperately need to hear. Especially if you believe that AVNs have become harder in recent years. Because I can guarantee you: they won't get any easier in the future.
Especially if your ASP is declining, or you're missing Amazon's Net PPM target on your account.
Vendor Managers want matching compensation or else will threaten to delist top offending ASINs in 2026/27.
But what if you were to delist your non-structurally profitable assortment?
It's an interesting thought experiment, as the alternative is to keep growing SKUs that often were never meant to be sold on Amazon in the first place: Heavy-bulky items, slow-moving and low ASP ASINs, products that could be better sold by distributors that are willing to operate at much lower margins, …
Each year you keep funding a portfolio that you know isn't sustainable, is a year that you grow your sales dependency on Amazon and kicking the profitability can down the road.
I've seen this way too many times.
The ends always in the same outcome: your customer P&L is facing the brunt. Amazon won't subsidise your business any longer.
So ask yourself:
If you would have to improve Amazon's Net PPM and must delist 20% of your portfolio, which products would have to go?