Ecommerce
Intermediate
19 min
Product research — sizing an opportunity before you buy inventory
The problem
You see a product doing well. The supplier quotes a good price. You order ₹6 lakh of inventory.
The workflow
1Define the decision
2Gather marketplace facts
3Assess competition
4Model the margin
5Find differentiation
6Model the downside
7Decide
★Record assumptions
What you need
Decision: ₹6,00,000 of inventory in insulated steel lunch boxes for Amazon.in + Flipkart at ₹749. Observed: main keyword ~18,000 monthly searches (keyword tool).
The tool
SMEMinds Amazon Profitability AI, Global Profitability Calculator, Quick Commerce Margin Model
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. DEMAND — 18,000 monthly searches on the main term is meaningful volume for kitchenware.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- Note what the analysis refused to estimate — sales velocity, conversion rate, competitor revenue. Any tool or advisor that supplies these confidently for an Indian marketplace is guessing.
- Run the margin model yourself with real fee tables. The gross spread of ₹481 tells you almost nothing until the layers are applied.
- Read the 3.9★ competitor's reviews before deciding. The analysis is explicitly incomplete without them, and that is correct.
- Check the 8-month carrying assumption against your actual cash flow, not your sense of it.