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Fulfill Orders Friday - Share Your Insights, Boost Your Sales!
Hey Amazon sellers! Welcome back to our "Fulfill Orders Friday" discussion. Last week, we kicked off this new thread as a space for us to share our experiences with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM).
I'm hoping to keep this a semi-regular series based on the level of response, so let's try this again and see if we can get a lively conversation going! I'm sure many of you have valuable insights, tips, and stories to share about your recent selling activities. Whether it's your latest FBA shipment, an FBM order that went smoothly, or a challenge you overcame - we want to hear about it.
By opening up and discussing our day-to-day realities as Amazon sellers, we can learn from each other's successes and missteps. Who knows, you might even discover a new strategy or solution that helps boost your sales and profitability.
So don't be shy, jump in and let us know:
- How have your FBA and/or FBM sales been doing lately? Any noticeable trends or changes?
- What fulfillment-related issues have you encountered, and how did you resolve them?
- Have you recently tried any new techniques or tools to optimize your fulfillment operations?
- What advice would you offer to other sellers struggling with their fulfillment processes?
I look forward to reading your responses and building this into an engaging, supportive community discussion.
Happy Fulfilling, and have a great weekend!
16 replies
Seller_5OoNWIikvQ4cB
Yes, very noticeable. Our sales have been steadily declining for the last couple of years. We went from mid seven figures to low seven figures.
Also, we sold a total of $0 for about 5 months this year because we were suspended for joining some stupid listing in Amazon's own system.
Our sales in the last 2 years show a trend towards nothing.
There is no future here for us.
Seller_kIukTwdhvntAp
"How have your FBA and/or FBM sales been doing lately? Any noticeable trends or changes?"
Despite having nearly the same numbers of ASINs in stock my sales on here are down 46% YTD.
Whatever Amazon did to your search methods has worked great FOR AMAZON.
As to shipping Friday, I used to ship virtually every order the day it was received if it came in before 3PM. Orders after that cut off went out the next day including Saturdays.
What fulfillment-related issues have you encountered, and how did you resolve them?
That was the case BEFORE Amazon decided that they want total control of my life and store by FORCING me into AHT, Amazon Buy Shipping and everything else if my "Promise gap" exceeded 2.0 days.
Since that time I have taken control of my life and shipping by sending everything out the very last day possibly -- the 'ship by date.'
I am no longer in danger of being forced into your system deciding what services I have to use. The result is that I don't ship as quickly and Amazon buyers get a slight DELAY in when they get their items.
" What advice would you offer to other sellers struggling with their fulfillment processes?"
Use your "Order Handling Capacity" to set the number of packages that you can COMFORTABLY ship in a single day.
If you can handle 50, great for you. I'm a single man shop and I don't need any more pressure in my life than I already have.
I'm currently set at 25 packages. IF there is a busy day, or a good selling weekend, once 25 orders is reached every additional order beyond that has an extra day added to the expected shipping date until the number reaches 50. At that point it adds an additional day.
Seller_Sram36TnVt73c
The the shipping stuff has gotten way out of control and over convoluted and overcomplicated.
I mainly use USPS and every now and then Amazon forces me to use UPS or FedEx and those orders get canceled. Then no one is Happy... the buyer, Amazon nor me as the seller.
Last night I got an order that I had to ship today using UPS or FedEx but that doesn't give me enough time to arrange a pickup even if I wanted to because they take a day to pick up so it'd be late... and then the customer gets to keep my merchandise for free if it doesn't show up on time or even if it does.
Seller_iiGGqTZLfNB80
There is a significant change for my sales. It suddenly dropped from 15-20 orders a day to 1 order yesterday. The only change I did for listing is reduced ads for this listing and this is the result. For the last 30 days I did not made any profits in actual because of the ads payments.
Another issue that I encounter is about my delivery times. I use SSA and AHT. My actual handling time is 0.8 days, transit time 4.2 days and I have 0 late shipment rate, 0 pre-fulfillment cancel rate, 100 valid tracking rate, 100 on-time delivery rate. But when I check my listing detail page customers are seeing much more delivery dates than actual. Even a customer in my same city was seeing 7-8 days for delivery. It used to show customers 3-4 days with same conditions before. I guess this caused me a huge sales drop.
To resolve this problem I connected Amazon support and of course nothing changed.
My listings are handmade and I am working very hard but the future with Amazon seems no light. Currently I am thinking to sell my products on other platforms.
Bryce_Amazon
Hey there @Seller_iiGGqTZLfNB80,
To resolve this problem I connected Amazon support and of course nothing changed.
As another commenter mentioned, this is being investigated by my colleague KJ in this thread. They are continuing to collect feedback and provide it directly to the internal team who oversees this - I recommend replying in that thread with any additional pieces of feedback you may have that haven't been raised yet!
- Bryce
Seller_Qbd0RsfZFEZBY
We are up YoY almost 100% but MoM we struggle to gain more than 10% The larger gains are from an SEO play. The small gains are due to competition.
FBA-We leaned into the new inventory placement expense and gained marketshare. Otherwise the systems are all the same. Nothing new in inbound workflows, managing "missing from inbound" and "warehouse lost" are the same.
FBM-We leaned into the new on time delivery reporting and gained some marketshare by early adopting a management system. UPS ground saver has reduced costs some. Veemo was a joke.
The new inventory placement process had a learning curve to optimize. We just send more and more on LTL instead of SPD to mitigate the potential costs. OTDR requires some intent to keep at 100%. Its literally as simple as turning on the auto settings for shipping and handling and using Amazon buy Shipping. Aside form that we have a 2pm cutoff time and ship same day.
Theres a system and process for all of it. Learn it and it becomes second nature. No need to get emotions at late packages, inventory placement fees or missing a few items sent in to FBA...theres a system for all of it.....
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