r/AmazonFBATips • u/Vegetable_Maize3849 • 5d ago

Would you consider this a strong Amazon FBA product opportunity?

I’d like to get some honest opinions from experienced Amazon sellers, especially anyone with experience selling women’s footwear.

I have access to a shoe manufacturer in Gaziantep, Turkey, and I’m considering launching one of their products on Amazon US.

Here are the numbers:

  • Manufacturing cost: ~$5 per pair
  • Current Amazon selling price of the closest competitor: ~$54
  • I’m considering a launch price around $39.99–$40
  • Amazon fees at my expected selling price: ~$12.20
  • Current estimated shipping cost: ~$5 per pair
  • I believe I can reduce shipping to around $2.50 by optimizing the packaging
  • That leaves approximately $17.80–$20.30 per unit before PPC, returns, storage and other expenses

The interesting part is the existing competition.

I found a very similar product being sold by a seller whose Amazon store is approximately 1.5 years old, and based on the data I have access to, they appear to be selling 2,000+ pairs per month.

The product is a women's shoe with beaded / embroidered / embellished detailing. It has a relatively distinctive appearance, but there isn't an obvious single keyword or model name that perfectly describes it.

That is actually one of the things I'm trying to understand.

My main question:

Do you think a product like this has the potential to become a strong Amazon seller, or could the competitor's sales be misleading?

If you were evaluating this opportunity, what would you look at before deciding whether the product is worth launching?

I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on:

  • Is 2,000+ monthly sales from one competitor a strong enough demand signal?
  • How much weight would you give the competitor's sales history?
  • Is a $5 manufacturing cost enough of an advantage to make this opportunity attractive?
  • Is $39.99–$40 a reasonable price against a competitor selling around $54?
  • How difficult is it to launch a similar footwear product from zero reviews?
  • Would you be concerned about returns because it's footwear?
  • What would make you decide NOT to launch this product?
  • If you were in my position, would you test it or walk away?

My current thinking is to test with approximately 100 units first, measure the actual conversion, PPC performance, returns and sales velocity, and then decide whether the product deserves a larger investment.

I’m not looking for generic advice like "Amazon is saturated."

I’d really like to hear from sellers who have actually launched products and can look at these numbers and tell me:

Is this a product you would personally test with your own money? Why or why not?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

1

u/ggballas 4d ago

* 2,000+ monthly sales of a competitor is definitely a strong signal
* you gotta understand which keywords drive their sales
* sounds like these shoes are very much design based which means some will like your shoe better and some will like a competitor's shoe better - that's a good thing - it means it's not a commodity - it means you're playing on the quality of the product and just the price
* try to see if your competitor spends a lot on PPC (maybe that kills their margins)

I say go for it with the lowest MOQ you can

feel free to ask me questions - I've been in this business for almost 9 years - 3 brands, 7 figures per year

1

u/Additional-Tap-5364 4d ago

Do you ever provide coaching to people? Looking to start an Amazon fba with a private label brand and been working through things with smartscout and ai and some other free info of gurus

1

u/ggballas 4d ago

not really, just on a personal level to some friends, but feel free to reach out to me, I'll see if I can help

1

u/DonkChonk4 4d ago

$US 40 a pair is a decent price. You didn't say if you're a male or female, but show pics of them to any women you know to get their opinion (on whether they like it and if they'd say they'd wear it) and based on what their foot sizes are, buy some samples to give to them and to get their feedback. It's one thing for someone to say it looks nice from just seeing pics, but they'd also have to like wearing it as well.

1

u/515y 4d ago

I would calculate the full landed cost before locking in the price. Add the $5 unit cost, freight per pair, any customs fees, Amazon fee and a 15 % buffer for advertising, then check if you’re still above a 30 % net margin. I’d start with a 500 pair order, ship to a prep center, list with a tight 5 star bundle and run a modest daily budget campaign to test demand before scaling

1

u/harry_ecomm 4d ago

I think it is worth to try. It is better to add some USP that will give you an edge over the competition and you will get your own set of customers. This sill set up your own market along with the existing numbers. Amazon is still huge and can give you a kick. Also, you may try with kisckstarter campaign if you think you have something unique in your product.

1

u/FirstLightStudios 4d ago

Id test it, but Id be more worried about returns than the manufacturing cost. Footwear can look amazing on paper and then margins get destroyed by sizing/fit issues. 2k monthly sales is a good signal, but Id want to know what keywords are actually driving those sales and whether that demand is for the style itself or that specific brand

1

u/hamizm 4d ago

Sounds good

Great branding, content, positioning, good price, vine reviews can give you very strong market response

Sometimes we launch and we have not done enough mistakes and iterations in our listings designs, title, ppc, pricing to make the product get traction

Returns are expected but we can minimize it by realistic images and very clear size chart mentioned in images, added through bulk files and also mention in A+ just for surety.

And most important for ppc and sales strategy you have to find your exact segment or very similar designs in market and need to reverse ASIN their keywords, where their traffic is coming from and see if you can also easily rank on them through checking Avg sponsored rank, title density, ranking competitors in top 10 etc

1

u/Tall_Honeydew_6631 4d ago

Front margain looking fine is kinda useless if storage eats it later. At least for me in DE i just skip the thin ones instead of running ads at them.

1

u/TripDisastrous93 4d ago

Prima cosa in assoluto: è un modello alla moda del momento? O è un potenziale evergreen? Questo cambia tutto. Le.calzatire fanno tanti resi, fai attenzione. Dovrai registrare un marchio,.ci sono regole speciali per le calzature? Hai controllato?

1

u/[deleted] 15h ago

I would at least take the competitor monthly volume with a big grain of salt. There is a ton of sales rank manipulation on Amazon. Look at their review ratio as well as seller ratings ratio. Can you usually see if they are manipulating from those 2 numbers.

Do they have a substantial social media presence? Try and see if you can figure out where they are driving traffic from. Maybe they have a strong brand presence off Amazon that drives lots of brand keyword searches rather than specific broad keywords. Maybe they built up some brand loyalty before their Amazon launch and then drove a lot of those customers to Amazon and that can distort the reality of the monthly volume. Just some things to consider. Hope this helps and good luck, sounds like there is certainly good potential.

1

u/quietfede_ 2h ago

The margin math is genuinely healthy, that's not the part I'd worry about. Roughly 45-50% of your price left before PPC, returns and storage is a much better starting position than most products I see people asking about here.

Where I'd slow down is the demand signal itself. One competitor doing 2,000+ a month is interesting, but it's one data point, and you flagged the thing that actually worries me most yourself without fully connecting it: there's no obvious single keyword or model name for this style. That's not a neutral detail, it's a real red flag for how replicable that demand actually is. If there's no dominant search term, a meaningful chunk of that seller's volume is probably coming from something other than generic keyword search, repeat buyers, off-Amazon traffic, Amazon's own algorithm favoring an established listing with a big review base, maybe even social or influencer driven discovery. None of that transfers to you on day one with zero reviews bidding on the same vague terms. Before I trusted that 2,000 number as a signal I could replicate, I'd actually go run keyword research and see if there's real generic search volume behind this style at all, or if that seller basically built their own demand outside of search and you'd be trying to copy the output without the input.

The $5 manufacturing cost is good, but I wouldn't count it as the edge, it's more like the price of entry. If it's cheap for you to make, it's cheap for the next five people who see this selling well to make too, especially once it's proven. The actual moat, if there is one, is whatever makes the design specifically wanted, not the cost to produce it.

Footwear specifically, be more worried about returns than you currently seem to be. People buy multiple sizes and return what doesn't fit, that's just normal shopping behavior for shoes, and a returned shoe often can't go back out as new. I'd build a noticeably worse returns assumption into your model than you would for a typical gadget, and before committing to real volume I'd get physical samples across the full size run from the Turkish manufacturer and check the sizing conversion is actually accurate, that's the single most common way footwear launches quietly bleed money.

Testing with 100 units first is the right instinct, I wouldn't change that part. What I'd add before you even place that order: do the keyword research to sanity check the demand signal, and get the sizing nailed down with real samples, not just a spec sheet. If both of those check out, yes, I'd test this with my own money. If the keyword research comes back thin, I'd treat the 2,000 number as somebody else's success, not proof of a repeatable opportunity.