This feature guide will guide sellers on how to use Stock Locking Program function on the Manage Product page.
Stock Locking Program is a function to give sellers extra traffic and even subsidies by committing a certain amount of stock, which sellers can't reduce manually outside of customer sales activities.
However, sellers can still request to unlock the stock through specific steps.

How to Use

Once sellers click Stock Locking Program on the manage product page, sellers will see the program's introduction and benefit. Sellers should click Start as the next step to participate in the program.
Sellers will continue to a page where they can see all the eligible products that will be locked for the program, if they decide to submit it.
On this page, sellers can review information such as:

1. When is the locking period and how long it will take before the program happened
2. Search products based on product name, product ID, or Seller SKU
3. Select whether Product(s) or SKU(s) are going to be opt-in for the program
4. Recognize the target stock and whether the current stock already meets the target stock

Once sellers click Next, they will be redirected to adjust the stock.
On the adjustment page, sellers need to adjust the stock number to follow the target stock (minimum), and then click Save.
If sellers have already reviewed all the products, they will receive a confirmation pop-up to ensure the submission is on their consent and control. If all is good, click Confirm.
Once sellers submit their agreement to join the program, if the locking period has not been started yet, they will still be able to see the Recommendation widget on the Manage Product Page. And when they click, they can re-review the eligible products, but there will be no action button.
Before the stock locking period happens, sellers can identify the submitted products by seeing a "grey lock" icon besides the stock qty on the manage product page. Both on single products and product with variants.
Once the locking period starts, the lock icon will be changed into "green lock" with updated information.

How to Unlock Stock

We understand that during peak periods, flexibility is needed to update (reduce) the stock, especially when the unpredictable situation happens.
If you wish to unlock the committed stock from the program, the systems will auto-approve 3 SKUs per seller. The process might take some time to be fully unlocked, but it's going to be done within minutes. The request for unlocking the stock can be done at Product level or SKU level.
If sellers request to unlock products more than 3SKUs, they will need to fill out the unlock reasons for each SKU. The entry point will still be the same, but sellers will be directed to a form before they can submit for the unlock. Once the submission is submitted, sellers will see a success notification on the manage product page.
Once the unlock request is approved, sellers will no longer see the "lock" icon on the products.