Prime Big Deal Days return on 6th–7th October, giving Prime members 48 hours of exclusive deals across more than 35 categories. New ‘Today’s Big Deals’ will also be introduced three times a day throughout the event, creating a constantly changing mix of offers across categories including beauty, technology, kitchen, fashion and home.
For e-commerce brands, events like this are about more than getting a few extra orders. A product that normally generates a steady stream of orders can suddenly become one of your fastest-moving SKUs, and stock that looked plentiful a few days ago can disappear far more quickly than expected. Your picking team has more work to do, packing stations become busier and your carrier collections suddenly matter a lot more.
The promotion might only last 48 hours, but the fulfilment challenge can start well before the first order lands.
Know what you’re expecting
One of the biggest advantages an e-commerce business can have during a major promotional event is a reasonably clear idea of what might happen. That doesn’t mean predicting every order, it means understanding which products are being promoted, how much stock is available and what your expected increase in demand looks like.
If certain products are going to feature heavily in your Prime Big Deal Days activity, make sure your fulfilment operation knows about them. Your warehouse team shouldn’t have to discover that a particular product has become a promotional bestseller when the orders start flooding in—having that information in advance means stock can be positioned appropriately, picking processes can be considered and additional resources can be planned where necessary.
Keep your fastest-moving products moving
When order volumes increase, warehouse efficiency becomes even more important. A few seconds saved on every order may not sound significant, but when hundreds or thousands of orders are going out of the door, those small efficiencies can add up.
Where possible, fast-moving products should be easy for the picking team to access. Stock should be clearly organised, product locations should be accurate and your warehouse management system should give you a reliable picture of what is actually available.
In terms of protecting your brand, this is particularly important as there’s nothing more frustrating for a customer to have found the perfect bargain, only for you to be unable to fulfil their order.
Don’t let packing become the bottleneck
Picking often gets the attention when talking about fulfilment capacity, but packing can be just as important. If orders are being picked faster than they can be packed, then the problem simply moves further down the process.
Think about your packing stations, packaging materials and the types of orders you are expecting. If your promotional activity is likely to generate larger numbers of small orders, for example, your packing operation needs to be set up accordingly.
It’s also worth making sure you have enough packaging stock before the event begins. Running short of boxes, mailers, tape or other essential materials when orders are coming in is an avoidable problem, and allows you to ensure consistency with your brand when it matters most.
Fast delivery creates higher expectations
Prime has helped establish fast delivery as an important part of the e-commerce experience, with customers increasingly accustomed to knowing when their order is going to arrive.
For brands running promotions, this makes reliable fulfilment particularly important. A customer might be delighted to find a product at a discounted price, but that experience can quickly change if the order is dispatched late, the wrong item is sent or the parcel arrives damaged.
Promotional events like Prime Big Deal Days should therefore be treated as a test of the entire fulfilment journey, not simply your ability to pick more orders.
What happens when demand changes?
One of the interesting things about Prime Big Deal Days is the way offers are introduced throughout the event. For brands involved in promotional activity, it’s a useful reminder that demand does not necessarily arrive in a neat, predictable pattern.
You might have a quiet morning followed by a sudden surge in orders, or one product could outperform expectations while another barely moves. Your fulfilment operation needs enough flexibility to respond.
That could mean having additional warehouse labour available, being able to move stock around the warehouse, adjusting picking priorities or simply having the visibility to spot a problem before it becomes a bigger one.
Use Prime Big Deal Days as a fulfilment health check
Perhaps the most useful thing about an event such as Prime Big Deal Days is what it tells you about your operation. Once the orders have been processed, look at what happened.
Did your warehouse cope comfortably with the increase in volume? Did certain products cause problems? Were there delays at picking or packing? Did your carrier collections work as expected? Were there more customer service queries than usual? Did your stock records remain accurate?
If something went wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean your fulfilment operation has failed. Rather that you’ve found something worth fixing.
For growing e-commerce businesses, these events can provide valuable real-world information about where additional capacity, better processes or specialist fulfilment support could make a difference.
Fulfilment should take the pressure, not add to it
Prime Big Deal Days is designed to encourage customers to shop, and for e-commerce brands that can mean a sudden increase in demand. The businesses that benefit from that demand need to be able to fulfil it.
That comes down to having the right stock, processes, people, systems and delivery arrangements in place before the orders arrive. And that’s where reliable fulfilment earns its keep.
