Fulfilment By Amazon Q's

[ReaderScars]

Is FBA pointless for low value, low weight items?

The package in question would be credit card sized, not even 5mm thick, weighs the same or less than a letter and would fit inside the smallest poly mailbag.

The retail value would be £2 or £2.50 including delivery. Although I've recently ordered low cost USB OTG cables from China via Amazon UK, these are probably very high worldwide volumes.

Any experience on FBA where low value orders are concerned? For instance, unless I misunderstand - and I probably do - using EU wide FBA makes thefulfilment about three times higher than the item value ??

[foliedouce]

It's not cheap that's for sure, but at the Catalyst Conference last month a UK Amazon director gave a speech and stated that sellers increase sales on average 50% by going FBA.

I guess you have to do the maths based on the margins you make, but it seems much more challenging to make money at the lower end of the pricing scale.

Out cheapest product retails at £9.99 which we contract manufacture ourselves and we can still make a profit on FBA, alebit it's a fine balance between how much product you let them store (far more expensive than our other warehouse) versus how available the product is for FBA rankings / getting the buy box.

[ReaderScars]

Yes, I'm surprised at the storage costs. At least the intended product is thin and flat so should use storage space efficiently. Thanks for your insight.

[DSLiverpool]

Fba returns are horrendous, sales up returns up and you just have to accept them as Amazon do it for you - first you see of your returns is a month later when it can be anything in a box literally anything.

[loafer123]

There are also stories of Amazon closing down retailers from selling and then selling the same product themselves, with all of the info they needed coming through the original retailer's use of FBA.

Be careful out there....

[DSLiverpool]

They don't close you down they just compete with you and make it hard.
Your own asins bundles and imports reduce this risk

[loafer123]

There are stories on the Wholesale forums of closures, too.

Your own bundles and imports definitely help, as you say, but single product Asins are shared by all vendors, so they would just use yours.

We have competitors who do that, whicb is annoying!

[DSLiverpool]

loafer123 said:

We have competitors who do that, whicb is annoying!

If a rival jumps on your own SKU change it for 1000 of the item and put your price up - they soon get the message.