Denese Depeza began her journey as an Amazon seller in January 2020. With a background in reselling and a knack for technology, she decided to explore retail arbitrage on Amazon as a side hustle to her corporate job. With her expertise in the beauty niche, Denese curated a selection of items she knew well. She then sourced products from local stores to resell on Amazon.

Starting her business wasn’t all smooth sailing. Denese had to manage inventory and fulfillment processes manually, which quickly became overwhelming. The time-consuming tasks of labeling, packing, and shipping products were taking a toll on her. With a 9-to-5 job as a contract specialist and two hours of commuting every day, she had extremely limited time for her side hustle.

The primary challenge Denese faced, though, was the process of creating shipments. She found that using Amazon’s native tools required significant time and effort. Just making her first shipment to FBA took two days.

“It was taking too much time,” she said. “I was up late at night.”

Denese realized that to sustain and grow her business, she needed a more streamlined system. She had to manage inventory, create shipments, and track financials better. This would not only save her time but also reduce the risk of errors. 

Solving the Time Crunch with InventoryLab

In search of a better way to manage her growing business, Denese discovered InventoryLab. Our tools for creating and listing FBA batches offered a better, faster way to send products to Amazon. These immediately jumped out at her as the solution she was looking for.

Our shipment creation tool made getting products to Amazon’s fulfillment centers a lot simpler. With InventoryLab, Denese could easily set up and manage shipments in one place. This heavily reduced the workload and time required to get through everything.

She said, “I started using [InventoryLab] for myself because before I was using Amazon, and Amazon FBA shipment setup was not friendly. Once you started using IL, and you set up all your boxes and what have you, and you print your labels … then you could just slap it on. … And it just made things easier, faster.”

The Results

The impact was immediate. When asked about how her first shipment through InventoryLab went, she shared, “That first shipment … I sent using Amazon, it took me about two days to get it done. When I went to IL, I finished the same night.”

Thanks to InventoryLab, the time it took her to prepare a batch and ship it to Amazon had been cut in half. 

Innovating During COVID-19 with a Prep Center

Denese had only been selling for a couple months when COVID-19 hit and she had to overhaul her strategy. Since she handled everything manually, her entire process was limited by quarantine rules. She couldn’t source products or fulfill orders efficiently.

Her husband battling cancer also added a layer of worry, as it became even more important to avoid bringing in any viruses. This meant disinfecting every single package that arrived at her house before she could sort everything out. 

To resolve these issues caused by the pandemic, she switched to an entirely hands-off business model. Instead of relying on retail arbitrage at local stores, she switched to online arbitrage, sourcing all her products on the web. And to keep the boxes out of her house, she hired a prep center to handle her inventory and ship it to Amazon FBA warehouses.

Luckily, her prep center was already using InventoryLab as well! This gave them a unified platform to align on details like the number of items in each shipment.

She explained, “Because they [the prep center] use InventoryLab… they go in and they start pulling what I have… and they create the shipment, everything in IL, and they send it to Amazon.”

The Results

Now, Denese never has to handle packages, she and her prep center track her inventory in the same place, and her process is faster than ever. She’s finally free to focus on profits rather than process.

That’s why the next step in her game plan was to figure out how to automate repricing and maximize her net revenue. And with the world opening up again, she had to be ready for an increase in competition.

The Need for a Repricer

Denese initially turned to Aura as her repricing tool. It worked well for her for a while, and at first the addition helped her earn more from her sales. However, when Aura used some recent AI updates to justify a significant price increase, it cut too deeply into her margins.

Denese explained, “I was happy with Aura, although people said that I was paying too much for it…. When they moved over to AI, it became more expensive.”

She had 300 ASINs but was only paying for a subscription tier that covered 250. The remaining 50 items in her store weren’t getting repriced, and upgrading to the next level was not cost-effective. She even mentioned attempting different strategies, but the software would still stop when the ASIN limit was hit.

Denese realized that she needed to upgrade to the next level, which could run up to 1,000 ASINs, to have all her items repriced. However, the additional cost was too high for just 50 ASINs. She couldn’t take on hundreds more ASINs just to make the price worthwhile either, due to her limited time. (Remember, this was just her side hustle!)

This led Denese to look for a way to sustain her profitability with a more practical yet equally robust repricing solution.

Watching Sales Skyrocket with SmartRepricer

As it turned out, we were able to help Denese once more. Our announcement about InventoryLab joining Threecolts, which also introduced our new integration with SmartRepricer, caught her attention immediately.

Denese learned that SmartRepricer offered several advantages over Aura. Firstly, it was built on AI from the beginning, so there were no extra costs for its core functionality. This was a significant factor for Denese, who had been facing increased costs with Aura’s AI updates. Additionally, SmartRepricer was known for its ease of implementation, making it an attractive option for her.

Denese started by watching a Threecolts video tutorial and supplemented this with strategies shared by other users on YouTube. She described her experience: “I started about 8 o’clock that night, doing my strategies, letting things populate. … It took me about three hours to do everything because I have about 20 strategies in there. … The actual process of switching over the software was pretty easy.”

The Results

The impact of SmartRepricer on Denese’s sales and revenue was immediate and impressive. On her first day with SmartRepricer, her daily sales more than doubled, jumping from an average of $600 to $1,400. 

She continued to see strong performance with $1,100 in sales on the second day. On the third day she saw a dip to $800 and got concerned, but when she looked into it, she realized she was just running out of things to sell. Her stock was moving faster than she could keep up with!

She explained her experience: “Why are these things selling that weren’t selling before? I still don’t know. It just kept moving the prices around and things started selling and I was like, ‘Okay.’ ”

This improvement was a stark contrast to her previous struggles with Aura, where she had to manually manage repricing limits.

Denese also appreciated that SmartRepricer helped her avoid FBA storage fees. She used to spend a lot of time manually repricing items to avoid these fees. With SmartRepricer, she could set automated strategies to adjust prices before the fees kicked in, ensuring she made the most out of her inventory.

What’s Next for Denese?

Looking ahead, Denese is focused on maximizing her profits. She has shifted her strategy from merely making sales to ensuring those sales are highly profitable. She explained, “My average monthly sales are between $20,000 and [$25,000]. And in Q4, obviously, it goes up to like [$40,000]. But this year, I’ve changed over my focus from making sales to making profit. So all of my strategies are set for profit.”

Denese aims to achieve a minimum profit margin that reflects her effort and investment. “I don’t want to make $5 [per item],” she said. “I want to make $10, $20.  … And my minimum [per month] … is 500 units.” 

That would turn her side hustle into a $30,000–$60,000+ income stream. With the help of SmartRepricer and InventoryLab, Denese knows this is doable.

Conclusion

Incorporating InventoryLab into her Amazon business was a game-changer for Denese Depeza. Our platform made shipment creation a breeze and simplified inventory management for her and her prep center. This let her focus more on sourcing and sales.

Later, when faced with the challenges of repricing, Denese found SmartRepricer. Now, with its support, she has shifted her focus from simply making sales to maximizing her profits. She’s implementing strategies that ensure each sale contributes significantly to her bottom line.

Denese’s story shows how Threecolts products like InventoryLab and SmartRepricer can help Amazon sellers, especially those who have little time to spare. With tools to help you work faster, track inventory, and automate pricing, you’ll free up more time for sourcing, optimizing, and maybe even a bit of relaxing.

Looking to simplify your Amazon business workflow while still earning maximum profits? Try InventoryLab for free for 30 days and start a free 14-day trial of SmartRepricer to see the results for yourself.

P.S. Represent a prep center like the one Denese relies on? Check out our quick guide to InventoryLab for prep centers.

Denese was interviewed by Dave Eagle.

Aura is a copyright of Vendrive, Inc. InventoryLab is not affiliated with Vendrive, Inc. in any way.