Halloween Clearance Arbitrage: What to Buy on Nov 1

1. Halloween Clearance Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow is November 1, the day shoppers start hunting Halloween clearance. The popular decor and the best-known costumes go first. Later in the month you'll find deeper markdowns on the leftovers other shoppers passed on.

Some of what you find will pay. The trick is knowing which items sell outside October and which ones you'd have to sit on for eleven months. Retailers mark down on their own schedules, so check the online clearance sections of the stores you already source from rather than counting on a set date.

Plan the trip tonight so you aren't deciding in the aisle:

• List the stores you already source from and open their online clearance pages first thing
• Get Keepa and the Amazon Seller app scanner ready on your phone
• Set a budget, and split it between sell-now items and holds before you spend a dollar
• Decide where holds will sit, at home or at your prep center, before you buy them

2. Why Clearance Works for OA

"When I started, up to the point where I was doing like I think $30,000, $35,000 a month, let's say around 80% of my business was just sourcing clearance. Okay, it's the best business model when it comes to scaling fast at the beginning and avoiding price tank."

How I Built a $35K/Month FBA Business on Clearance!

Clearance stock is limited. Once a retailer clears it, nobody restocks it at that price, so you don't get fifty sellers buying the same unit for months. That's what keeps the Amazon price from tanking. The clearance sourcing guide covers the full method.

3. The First Question: Sell Now or Next Fall?

Every Halloween clearance buy falls into one of two buckets. Either it sells year-round and you can send it in now, or it only sells in September and October and you're holding it until next year.

Decide which bucket before you buy. The math for each is different, and a product that works as a year-round flip can lose money as a hold.

4. Read the Seasonality in Keepa

Pull at least two years of sales rank history. A Halloween-only product shows a rank that improves in September, peaks in October and falls off a cliff in November.

"So stuff like this is stuff that is similar that sells a lot during Christmas, but that does not sell most of the year, like for the rest of the year."

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Same idea, different holiday. If the rank stays steady from January to August, the product sells year-round. That's the clearance you want right now. How to read Keepa graphs shows where to look.

5. What to Buy on November 1

Look for items sitting in the Halloween section that people use all year:

• Generic costume pieces and accessories with no Halloween branding, which sell for cosplay, theater and theme parties
• Party lighting, fog machines and effects gear people use for parties and events
• Plain fall and harvest decor without "Halloween" printed on it
• Craft supplies and storage bins that landed in the seasonal aisle

Run Keepa on each one. A product only counts as year-round if the chart says so.

6. What to Leave on the Shelf

• Candy and seasonal food: it's expiration-dated, it can be meltable, and you'd need to clear grocery gating first. See meltable inventory.
• Licensed costumes tied to one movie year: next fall's demand may be gone.
• Large inflatables and oversize decor: high fulfillment and storage costs on a product you'd hold for months.
• Face paint and costume makeup: Amazon counts cosmetics as expiration-dated, so a long hold is risky.

7. The Real Cost of Holding Until Next Fall in FBA

If you send Halloween stock into FBA now and wait for next October, Amazon charges aged inventory surcharges on top of monthly storage. The surcharge starts at 181 days. Inventory aged 271 to 300 days pays $5.45 per cubic foot, and it climbs from there. See the aged inventory surcharge guide for the full schedule.

Monthly storage costs more in Q4 as well: $2.40 per cubic foot for standard-size from October through December, compared with $0.78 from January through September.

Holding in FBA from November to next October eats most of a clearance margin on bulky items. Store holds at home or at your prep center and send them in for next season instead.

8. Time the Send-In for Next Season

Look at last year's chart for when the rank started improving. Plan for your units to be live a few weeks before that point.

Check your storage capacity too. Amazon sets capacity limits by storage type each month, and Q4 space gets tight, so a big seasonal send-in in September needs room in your limit. The capacity limit guide explains how to request more.

9. Size Every Buy to the Listing

Clearance tempts you to buy deep because the price looks silly. Size the buy to the listing's sales instead. Monthly sales divided by FBA sellers tells you your share if you match the Buy Box.

"Selling clearance products is one of the best way to actually make a profit and not have your price tank on Amazon, right? For multiple reasons."

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A cheap buy cost is only half of it. Your units still have to sell. How many units to buy covers the sizing math. I run clearance finds through these numbers in the Thursday class, so reserve a seat if you want to see it on live deals.

10. Label, Prep and Check-In

Since commingling ended March 31, 2026, every unit you send needs your own FNSKU label unless you're the Brand Representative. Clearance buys often come in mixed lots, so build labeling time into each buy.

Costume pieces in loose packaging may need bagging, and bags need suffocation warnings. Your prep center can handle both. Printing FNSKU labels covers the label side.

11. Find the Clearance Other Sellers Bought

Other OA sellers work Halloween clearance too, and their storefronts show what passed their numbers. When a storefront you follow adds a new seasonal product in early November, check it against the clearance price while stock lasts.

I built Arbitrage Stalker to track those storefronts and alert you when they add something. Pair it with the Keepa Product Finder to pull the rest of that brand's catalog.

12. Next Steps

Turn leftover clearance into a plan with these reads:

• Clearance Sourcing Guide - the full clearance method
• Aged Inventory Surcharge - what holding in FBA costs
• Selling Christmas Decorations - the next seasonal window
• Q4 Sourcing Calendar - what to source the rest of this season
• How to Read Keepa Graphs - spot seasonality before you buy