Market Signals
What each dashboard signal means — and when it is telling you to act.
Written lesson
The video for this lesson is in production — the written version below covers the full concept.
What it is
Market signals is the dashboard section that watches your catalog so you do not have to. Five cards, split into Opportunities and Headwinds, each listing the specific products where something just changed: Became profitable, Amazon left, Lost margin, Amazon entered, and More competition.
Margin signals fire the moment anything moves a product’s margin — a feed re-upload, a quote, a PO, an override, or an Amazon price sync. The Amazon-side signals come from a pattern scan over each listing’s price and offer history, re-run every few hours.
Why it exists
On a catalog of thousands of products, the expensive changes are the quiet ones: a SKU that slid below your margin floor, Amazon jumping onto a listing you own, a product that a new cost just made viable again. Nobody re-checks every row daily — the signal engine does.
Each signal is also a queue with a lifecycle. A row stays on its card until you acknowledge it (actioned), dismiss it (noise), or it expires on its own — so the dashboard reads as a to-do list, not a feed.
How to use it
- 1
Read the two columns
Opportunities are reasons to buy or reactivate: Became profitable and Amazon left. Headwinds are reasons to re-check a position: Lost margin, Amazon entered, and More competition.
- 2
Open the evidence
Every row shows the delta behind it — old → new margin, “Amazon @ price”, or baseline → recent seller count. The chart icon opens price & rank history without leaving the dashboard.
- 3
Jump to the product
Click through to the catalog to see the full picture: vendor costs, the other listings, quote and PO history.
- 4
Clear the queue
Acknowledge what you have actioned, dismiss what is noise, or Dismiss all. Unhandled signals expire on their own — margin signals after 30 days, market signals after 14.
Common questions
What exactly does each card mean?
Became profitable: margin crossed from a loss into profit — a reactivation candidate. Lost margin: an active SKU dropped below a 15% margin — renegotiate or re-price. Amazon entered / Amazon left: Amazon appeared on (or vanished from) a listing after a stable baseline — buy-box risk rose or fell. More competition: the seller count jumped sharply against its recent baseline.
Where does the Amazon data come from?
Each ASIN gets a one-time price-history backfill when added, then recurring syncs pull current offers, sales rank, and fees. Active and near-profitable products refresh daily; the rest on a slower cadence. The Catalog freshness cards on the same dashboard show how current the data is.
Why did a signal disappear?
Signals expire so the queue stays honest: margin signals after 30 days, Amazon and competition signals after 14. Acknowledging or dismissing clears them immediately.
Can I tune the thresholds?
Not yet — the floors are fixed (a 15% margin floor; a competition jump must be at least 1.5× the baseline and +3 sellers) and were chosen to avoid noise. Per-tenant thresholds are on the roadmap.
See it with your own data.
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