Sales Halved! Yet Another New Amazon Policy Is Upon Us
Amazon’s changes in 2025 are quietly re-ordering the strategic logic of cross-border sellers. Altering the color scheme of the front-end, or compliance during reviews, waves of account verification or changes in promotion rules, each change of the rules of the policy could be a major factor in sales trends.
As the ambiguity from all the waffling policies builds up, the business of Amazon sellers are in the uncharted waters.
Part 1 Many Amazon sellers report sharp declines in sales
Between May and August 2025, several foreign Amazon sellers had posted in the U.S. site forum that their sales crashed, as told from AMZ123. Others said their sales had dropped 60% to 80% from the same time last year:
“I would sell 40 to 60 orders a day, but nowadays I see maybe 3 orders.”
“Consumer’s are now refusing to buy non-essentials, I have not made a single sale for 29 days in a row.”
So too have domestic vendors. Many sellers recently put out on social media charts showing recent sales decline back to August:
“Every day in August was very bad.”
“Orders got sliced in half, ads didn’t convert to sales and the money couldn’t be spent out.”
When looking at the general market and industry response, AMZ123 concluded that the existing problem is the result of a combination of external and internal factors:
Externally, the U.S. Consumer Confidence Index has been declining in response to the uncertainty in tariff policy, and increasing concerns over inflation. Family purse strings have tightened and there is an obvious pullback in discretionary spend. The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index, as estimated by the University of Michigan, fell to 58.6 in August 2025, worse than the 61.7 in July, and below the market expectation of 62.
Pressure from tariffs has been exacerbating the sales challenges as well. One such seller disclosed that the new product but a slow batch, was subjected to a 30% tariff also, and in order to break even had to increase the price, thereby losing the Buy Box, that eventually led to reduced sales. The price of goods was top of mind for Wunderkind's poll of U.S. consumers this back-to-school season.
Consumer behaviour has altered dramatically in this scenario. High cost of living has led consumers to hold off on spending, prioritise on essentials and channel their budget into more affordable platforms like Temu, TikTok Shop and SHEIN.
Closer to home, in 2025, Amazon kept altering the rules and ramping up the intensity of account inspections: the first half of August alone, it clamped down on categories including high-pressure cleaners and handmade products, and then rolled out new account sweeps, closely scrutinising listing compliance.
Curtain Call 2021: What struck me the most here was the overall feeling from sellers being overwhelmed: It was the back-to-back waves of hundreds of thousands of Amazon ‘audits” along with the multiple market policy changes — first, the front-end page has been having to constantly being changed, the inability to take coupons indirectly affecting operations, but then you implemented promotion registration fees, a skywalk – rising – storage fees, return costs, having to buy advertising – etc. – retailers were feeling more and more squeezed not only on gross margin (GM) but net: if a 60% GM item Harrys pad was now 35% East Harlem pad.
Sellers already had fewer avenues for traffic after Amazon suspended Google ad placements in July. Some now go so far as saying that Amazon’s recently introduced A.I.-based systems and changes to its algorithm have benefited large sellers and brand owners. The visibility of small-scale sellers, manufacturers, and small enterprises has already waned, and SMEs are now more submissive in competition.
There is not a doubt that we incur higher costs, existing in an increasingly competitive environment that may or may not have regulatory clarity and "survival" bubble for small & medium size sellers are closing. Some have contemplated quitting and some have made plans to leave Amazon.
But Amazon’s continued tweaks have not ceased.
Part 2 Amazon to remove large number of variant themes
Per AMZ123, Amazon posted an announcement on August 19 about plans to delete some variations.
From September 2 through November 30, 2025, Amazon will delete variation themes that have not been used or are rarely used on product templates, the announcement read. Amazon is already labeling the affected variation themes in the templates as “Do Not Use”.
If sellers would still like to update ASINs using impacted Variation Themes, Amazon suggests:
- Navigate to “Manage Inventory” and remove the current parent ASIN.
- Remove Parent-Child relation, Child relation type, Parent SKU and Variation Theme name attributes from the child ASINs associated with the parent.
- Create new ASINs with variations themes that are available.
- Associate its related child ASINs with the new parent ASIN.
Meanwhile, Amazon also released a list of variation themes that are currently planned to be removed that contains over 74,000 themes.
Apparently there’s a “variation” whatever means to have a set of ASINs that are parent-child connected. Merging and Splitting Variations used to help Amazon sellers. Previously, merging and splitting variations was a way not only to increase reviews, but to help with listing rankings to sell more. But in recent years, Amazon has cracked down on audits, and this operation is closely policed.
So, specifically this adjustment has caused controversy because of its broadness.
Directly, some sellers complained that the advice to delete parents and recreate would proportionally trigger their products to be flagged by the algorithm for abuse of variations. Others have been frustrated to have to take time to develop versions of it, that, they say they’ve used over many years.
Some sellers also wondered if the list of Variation Themes to be removed were as per expectations? For instance, the announcement and list state that when the new rule goes into effect, “size” and “color” will no longer be among the variation options in the outerwear category.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment as of press time. The new rule may offer some wiggle room for adjustment before it is firmly in place, most sellers believe.
But Amazon changing up variation themes is already a done deal. So the suggestion of AMZ123 is that sellers are supposed to focus on the latest news/moment and adjust in time to reduce the influence on sales.
Where Windingflow Can Help
In a brutal climate where fees are climbing, regulations are tightening and it’s tougher to make a store stand out, the little guys — and medium-sized ones — of course need every possible edge to stay competitive.
That’s where Windingflow comes in:
- Automates Order Fulfillment: Save time, minimize errors, and ship more orders.
- Consolidate Your Supply Chain: One place for Vendor Central and Seller Central and even eBay too…
- Cost & Risk Reduction: EDI compliance built in reduces chargebacks and hidden costs.
- Scalable Growth: $100K to $100M in sales, Windingflow grows with your business.
✨ In a year when sales are up in the air and policies are a moving target, being adaptable while having the operational backbone of Windingflow can help sellers survive (and thrive) on Amazon.
