I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately and could really use some outside perspective. I’m an Amazon seller, mostly doing a mix of private label and online arbitrage in the European markets.

Here’s the situation: There are only two of us doing product research at my current company. We both started around the same time with basically zero training—just the mechanical steps of listing creation and basic sourcing, no real market research guidance. We each have about 300 live products now.

The frustrating part is the gap in our results. The other seller is consistently pulling in 300-400 sales a day. I’m stuck in the 200-300 range. That’s a consistent 80-100 order difference every single day, and I can’t figure out why.

I’ve been grinding, reading every forum post and article I can find. I honestly feel like my understanding of markets and products is deeper than hers at this point. Just to give you an idea, my typical process looks like this: I use a tool to scan for potential products in Germany, filtering for things listed in the last 200 days with monthly sales over 50 units. Then I dig into the keywords—checking market capacity, how many new products are breaking in, sales concentration, seasonal trends. If I see a niche with a bunch of new, functionally similar products all doing, say, 40-50 sales a month, I think, "Okay, there's room here." On the supply side, I’m mostly sourcing stock products, nothing custom.

But the results are all over the place. Some of my picks do well, others just completely flatline. I know operations can be a factor, but our listings are handled by the same team, so I feel like I can’t keep blaming that.

When I finally asked her what she thinks the difference is, her answer was pretty blunt. She said something like, "Everything you pick is in black, white, or gray. They just don’t look like something anyone would want."

That hit me. She was right. My whole process has been almost entirely data-driven. I barely even look at the product itself—if the keyword data is there, I move on. I figured if competitors are selling it in those colors, it’s fine. But looking at our results now, the products with better visual appeal, more color variety, just seem to perform better. They pop more in the search results, plain and simple. I’ve started trying to factor that in, but I feel like there have to be other blind spots I’m missing.

I’ve thought about differentiation, but my ideas are pretty basic—variation packs, different colors, simple bundles. I worry I’m just chasing things that seem like a good idea but aren’t real needs. If a competitor is selling a plain black one and it moves, the need is obviously there. That said, I did try a simple bundle recently that actually outperformed my expectations, so now I’m even more confused about what actually works.

Anyway, this is getting long. Just hoping to hear from anyone who’s been doing this a while, especially if you’re working in a similar high-volume, mixed sourcing model. What are the non-obvious things you’ve learned to look for that the data alone doesn't show?

Thanks in advance.