ClearRoute

Idea

ClearRoute turns a small e-commerce brand's pile of excess, slow-moving, and returned inventory into cash instead of a storage-fee bill.

It connects to a seller's Amazon Seller Central and Shopify accounts, scores every SKU by how urgently it is bleeding money (long-term storage fees, tied-up cash, returns piling up), and recommends the single disposition channel per SKU (liquidate, discount, bundle, return to vendor, or write off) with an estimated recovery dollar amount. No enterprise sales process, no truckload minimums.

Market gap

Every existing disposition option is built for either enterprise volume or a single large liquidation event, not for a small operator managing this decision every week. Optoro and B-Stock's enterprise "Direct" program require truckload-level commitments and long sales cycles. Forecasting tools like SoStocked and Cogsy stop the moment stock is purchased: they tell a seller when to reorder, not what to do with the stock that already aged out.

Timing is sharper than usual right now. Amazon raised base FBA storage rates again in 2026 and added a fuel/logistics surcharge, payouts now lag to D+7 (tightening the cash cost of stock sitting idle), and Amazon ended free FBA prep/labeling services, pushing more inventory-ops burden onto small teams with no dedicated staff for it.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, with assumptions stated:

• ~1.65 million active third-party sellers on Amazon in the US (source: ForceGet, "How Many Sellers Are on Amazon 2025").
• ~100,000+ of those sellers do $1M+/year in sales, up from 60,000 in 2021 (source: Novadata Amazon Seller Statistics). This is the clearest sourced anchor for sellers with real inventory complexity.
• Assumption: broadening the target band down to $500K-$20M/year roughly doubles that $1M+ count, based on typical revenue-distribution shape among Amazon sellers. This gives an estimated 200,000 sellers in the target band. This step is a heuristic, not a directly sourced figure, and is flagged as such.
• Blended average contract value: $199/month (Growth tier, the expected center of gravity for multi-thousand-SKU catalogs) x 12 = $2,388/year.

TAM = 200,000 sellers x $2,388 = ~$478M.

SAM: no small-seller-specific excess-inventory write-off rate exists publicly (checked and not found), so this uses a conservative, stated assumption: roughly 40% of the target band carries recurring excess or aging inventory serious enough to pay for monitoring, based on how broadly LTSF thresholds apply once any SKU sits past 365 days.

SAM = 80,000 sellers x $2,388 = ~$191M.

SOM: realistic 3-year target for a bootstrapped 1 to 3 person team running self-serve signup off the free Storage Fee Risk Scan: 1,000 paying customers (0.5% of SAM) at a blended $1,800 ACV (weighted toward the Starter tier early on).

SOM = ~$1.8M ARR by year 3.

Monetization strategy

Recurring subscription SaaS. The seller pays monthly or annually regardless of whether they act on a given recommendation, because new inventory ages into risk every week and new returns arrive continuously. This is a monitoring relationship, not a one-time transaction, so the value compounds the longer they stay connected.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, $79/month: up to 500 active SKUs, one marketplace connection, weekly digest, CSV export. The entry point for a solo seller.
• Growth, $199/month (anchor): up to 3,000 SKUs, both Amazon and Shopify connections, daily-refreshed recommendations, quarterly write-off and tax-support export. Sized for the multi-thousand-SKU catalogs that carry the real dollar exposure.
• Scale, $399/month: unlimited SKUs, multiple brand workspaces, API access.
• Annual plans: 2 months free. Sellers are cash-flow sensitive given D+7 payouts, so annual commitment is priced to feel like a discount, not a risk.

Lead magnet

A free "FBA Storage Fee Risk Scan." The seller connects Seller Central read-only (no credit card), and within minutes sees exactly which SKUs are approaching or already past Amazon's 365-day long-term storage threshold, and how many dollars in fees will hit in the next 30, 60, and 90 days. The number is specific and dated, which is what turns a scan into a signup.

Social proof that the problem exists

• Amazon Seller Forum: "URGENT Help Needed with FBA Storage Fees and Inventory Issues": a seller reports long-term storage and overage fees pushing their account balance negative.
• Amazon Seller Forum: "Outrageous FBA Storage Fees": a seller reports $1,146 in storage fees in four weeks as long-term storage charges escalated from $180 to $450.
• Amazon Seller Forum: "Remove Unfulfillable Inventory - This is not fair": a seller objects to forced disposal of unfulfillable stock with no disposition choice offered.
• Amazon Seller Forum: inventory removal-window thread: confirms Amazon auto-removes inventory aged past its threshold or marked unfulfillable, with no seller-controlled disposition path.
• PracticalEcommerce: "FBA Seller, Tired of Storage Fees, Launches 3PL": a seller describes paying to pull inventory out of FBA early rather than face long-term storage fees, illustrating there is no good disposition option today.

Competitors

• Optoro: enterprise reverse-logistics platform used by IKEA, Best Buy, and Staples. Runs its own resale marketplaces (BULQ, Blinq) to route returned goods. Enterprise contracts, no self-serve small-seller tier. optoro.com
• B-Stock: Amazon's official liquidation auction partner. Auctions require $200+ minimum bids; its "B-Stock Direct" program requires a truckload or more per week, built for large sellers and manufacturers. bstock.com
• SoStocked / Cogsy: FBA inventory forecasting and reorder-timing tools for sellers with 50+ SKUs, priced from roughly $250/month. Useful for knowing when to reorder, silent on what to do with stock that already aged into risk. sostocked.com

What competitors offer now

Optoro and B-Stock Direct solve disposition, but only at volumes and contract sizes far above what a $500K-$20M brand ships. SoStocked and Cogsy solve forecasting, but their job ends at the reorder decision; neither one looks backward at inventory that is already sitting, aging, or coming back as a return. Nobody today takes a small seller's actual inventory-age and returns data and answers, SKU by SKU: liquidate this, discount that, write this one off.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Position ClearRoute as the layer that starts exactly where the forecasting tools stop: not preventing excess, monetizing the excess that already exists. No volume minimums like B-Stock Direct, no enterprise sales cycle like Optoro, and a specific, dated dollar number (not a vague pitch) delivered for free in the Storage Fee Risk Scan before any signup. The wedge is speed and specificity: a small seller learns a real number about their own account in minutes, then subscribes to keep acting on it every week.