Newbie - Send to Amazon but have to get product to myself first?
I thought I could directly put Amazon’s warehouse address as destination address when I order from my supplier, but looking at the workflow it looks like I need to add my own address, have the products shipped to me first before I can ‘send to Amazon’?
I feel I’m not understanding correctly here, how do people scale to 1,000 items? Do we all need a warehouse eventually? Then what’s the point of FBA saying ‘not needing warehouse’
Newbie - Send to Amazon but have to get product to myself first?
I thought I could directly put Amazon’s warehouse address as destination address when I order from my supplier, but looking at the workflow it looks like I need to add my own address, have the products shipped to me first before I can ‘send to Amazon’?
I feel I’m not understanding correctly here, how do people scale to 1,000 items? Do we all need a warehouse eventually? Then what’s the point of FBA saying ‘not needing warehouse’
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
I would suggest that you get the basics sorted out first.
You need to understand the various things already mentioned, such as CE marking and so on.
Without that sort of thing in place first, you will crash very quickly.
Have you got an understanding of how to keep accounts?
One thing that you will find, is that it is EXTREMELY easy to lose money selling on Amazon.
You need a full understand of the costs involved.
All of the various things like Helium10 and so on, can be useful, but only if you use them to their full extent. Otherwise, they are just an additional cost.
If you are doing Private label, do you understand all of the problems as well as advantages to doing that?
Shipping to the UK, can take 12 weeks or more. Yet shipping plans only remain open for 90 days.
This can cause problems.
36 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
You can ship from your supplier direct - but its not recommended if its a new supplier as you need to check quality etc
Where is your supplier , UK, China etc ?
Seller_NoMNQDGnEW5Bx
You need to balance out the costs, Amazon will label and prep for you at a cost but you’d have to factor that in. You also may not want to send all your items in at once depending how many you’ve ordered
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Mainly
If you are selling a product that many hundreds of others do ie phone cases, fidget spinners / poppers etc , you have to create your own asin which may not appear in the searches at all unless you advertise
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
Not all products qualify for the prep service at Amazon.
Aside from which, at a minimum, you will be paying Amazon 25p PER UNIT to put a label on for you.
Everything costs money.
It’s likely that if you can get your supplier to do this, they will also charge you for it.
And yes, advertising is the single biggest cost for a new product. It takes time and money to get traction. And bear in mind, that if your just buying something that is already available, but putting your brand on it, you will likely be competing against 20 other sellers with exactly the same product.
In which case, the cheapest and most heavily advertised product will win.
But even then, unless it’s a product that people actually want, you will still struggle to even get your money back.
Are you quite sure that this is a route that you want to take?
There are much easier ways to start on Amazon, such as selling goods that are readily available.
Seller_77IcbQKVGdZo0
For private label products this is often the case. As with any new to market product there are costs in getting the product designed, manufactured and marketed. You should have a business plan as to how long your product will be unprofitable for and when you expect
If it is not a private label product and one available from a wholesaler and the product doesn’t need marketing then there is no reason why you can’t make a small profit straight away on Amazon. There are little set up costs especially if you run your business from home to start with.
Amazon are only label the product if it has a manufacturers barcode on it. If it doesn’t they can’t label the product.
You can ask your manufacturer to label the product for you, there is nothing wrong with doing that. They may charge to do this though.
Seller_lATtlp4nA9JsV
Hi NEil,
Some great insights you have shared on the issue at hand.
Appreciate if you can further elaborate your point in quotes as it will help many sellers looking at seller forums
Quote
If you only have Amazon, then you can lose your income overnight, if there is any kind of problem.
Unquote
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
You only need to look at the amount of posts on here from sellers suspended (not to mention those who seek help off the forums)
If you are suspended, you cannot access funds in your account for at least 90 days
If you are suspended with a counterfeit allegation, you’ll likely need to go legal to access your funds
Seller_lATtlp4nA9JsV
Thank you for your input.
Yes you are right many people visit the forum with suspension issues. I think if doing wholesale, sellers should always go with reputed brands/wholeseller for their purchase.
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
If doing anything, sellers should always go with reputed wholesalers.
Even if buying from China, its been known in the past that Amazon will not accept Aliexpress etc invoices, so you need to make sure your invoices are from the factory, and they are not pro forma or commercial invoices
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Unfortunately that’s still no guarantee - especially of sellers don’t understand how to list properly on an asin using the EAN
Seller_lATtlp4nA9JsV
Yes this also surfaced here. Another issue that I saw on the forum is “list” is maintained by someone who is not the actual brand.
Once the list is established, they remove the other sellers through ip complaint and even if sellers have authentic invoices from reputed distributors they don’t get accepted.
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
That’s often when they list under the incorrect brand and EAN
Seller_0jWlqgUh2docO
they fail to mention this in the YT videos the OP watched
Seller_NoMNQDGnEW5Bx
I dont have a warehouse but I use a storage unit because I dont want everything at home and they take in and offer parcel collection too
Seller_0Amk0hnQkPWMH
Don’t you want to check the quality first? I would
Winston_Amazon
Thanks for creating such an interesting thread @Sheepirate ! Seeing as you are new, (welcome to the Forums by the way) highly recommend to check out Seller University
