How to analyze a supplier price list for Amazon wholesale

A supplier price list can hold thousands of products, and only a few of them are worth buying for Amazon. This is how to analyze a supplier price list step by step, so you spend your money on the products that pay and skip the rest.

1. Clean the price list first

Every step after this depends on clean data. Before you look at a single product:

• Keep one row per product, with the barcode (UPC or EAN), the supplier's price and, if you have them, the case pack and minimum order quantity (MOQ).
• Store barcodes as text. Excel turns 012345678905 into 12345678905 and long numbers into 1.23E+11, and both no longer match anything on Amazon.
• Remove the currency sign from the price column, and make sure the price is per unit, not per case.

Our guide to preparing a supplier file covers the columns in detail, and the free UPC and EAN validator catches broken barcodes.

2. Match every barcode to the right ASIN

Amazon sells by ASIN, suppliers list by barcode. One UPC can lead to several listings: a single unit, a 3-pack and a 12-pack of the same item. Compare the pack size in the listing title with what the supplier sells, and divide the cost when the listing is a multipack. A wrong match makes every number after it wrong; see UPC, EAN and ASIN matching mistakes.

3. Work out the real profit

For each matched product, take the Buy Box price and subtract the referral fee, the FBA fee and your own costs per unit: shipping to Amazon, prep, labels and any customs. What is left after the supplier's price is your profit. Divide it by your total cost per unit for the ROI. The full method is in how to check if a product is profitable on Amazon FBA.

4. Check demand

A good margin on a product that does not sell ties up your cash. Estimate monthly sales from the Best Sellers Rank, then estimate your share: with ten sellers on the listing, you will not get all the sales. See how to estimate monthly sales from Best Sellers Rank.

5. Check competition and price stability

Look at the number of sellers, whether Amazon itself sells the product, and how the Buy Box price moved over the last 90 days. A price that keeps falling and a growing number of sellers are the signs of a price war; see how to avoid price wars on Amazon wholesale.

6. Check that you may sell it

Some brands and categories need Amazon's approval (ungating) before you can list them, and some brands file complaints against resellers. Check your selling eligibility and the brand's IP complaint risk before you order. See how to avoid IP complaints and brand restrictions.

7. Decide, and find the price that works

Sort what is left into three groups: products to buy, products to look at again, and products to avoid. For the products that miss only on price, work out the highest cost you could pay and ask the supplier for it; see how to find the highest cost to pay for a wholesale product. Then decide how many units to order with our order quantity guide.

Doing it for thousands of products

By hand, these seven steps take minutes per product, which is why most price lists never get fully analyzed. Wholesale Analyzer does the whole supplier price list analysis in one upload: it matches every UPC, EAN or ASIN to Amazon, adds live fees, sales estimates, Buy Box history, competition, eligibility and IP risk, and gives each product a BUY, REVIEW or AVOID decision with the reasons, the order quantity and your maximum buy cost. You can try it on 50 products of your own list for free every month.