Has anyone ever made the transition from fulfilling all orders from home to FBA? We would like to make this transition for at least part of our inventory, but are afraid the transition might be difficult. What happens when you sign up for FBA? What is the hardest part of making this transition? I'd love to hear from anyone who is doing FBA. Thanks, Alplaus Books
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Rodger I actually went the other way around. I started all FBA and started transitioning to more MF. Bottom line is this .. FBA allows you a few things: lower in-house inventory, better visibility by being Prime listings, less packing hassle. You'll see less profit per sale but you have to weigh that against the lower processing workload. Having said that ..
You don't really "sign up for FBA" you just start doing it.
The hardest part of the transition is trust in the system. Secondary to that and a more practical consideration is just getting used to the workflow required to get items to AZ. It's really not that bad once you get used to it, though. Give yourself a few days to play around with it.
Since your items are already listed, it'll be a little easier. AoB has tools to help getting your FNSKU stickers together and creating shipments. They can help walk you through some of this in Live Chat to fit your specific situation.
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esbbooks Thanks, Rodger. That helps. What is "FNSKU"? We have heard from conversation with another seller that FBA is for books that sell quickly, e.g. with a selling rank under half a million. Otherwise, you end up getting stuck with long-term storage charges for unsold inventory. Does this fit with your experience? We are wondering where to begin in sending our existing inventory to Amazon. Thanks for your suggestions.
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Rodger FNSKU is the "Fulfillment Network SKU". It's the identifier AZ uses to track internal inventory. You'll have to put an FNSKU sticker on each item before shipping it to them. Once you enable FBA on AoB you'll see a "Print FNSKU" link on the full inventory list. Past that, there are a number of ways to go about packing/prepping your items to get to them.
As for the statements by some like you mentioned I can tell you this .. only you will be able to be the judge of the profitability and profit margin and figure out how their fees work into your business model. The blanket statement "FBA is for books that sell quickly, e.g. with a selling rank under half a million" is simply not accurate and a gross over-simplification of the implications of the AZ fee structure, sales velocity changes due to FBA, and a myriad of other factors. That statement does make sense and the spirit of it holds for many sellers. But I wouldn't take it as gospel. I actually do just the opposite. I find I make more money on faster sellers if I keep them MF and send the slower sellers to FBA to get them out of my way.
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esbbooks Thanks, Rodger, that was very helpful. We have gone ahead and enabled FBA on Amazon and on AOB. Sorry to be so clueless, but the obvious next question is "Now what?" I'm assuming that if we start listing things to FBA, the item will have both our own SKU and a FNSKU, is that right? Is there more information on AOB about how to ship items to Amazon, or do we need to look on Amazon for that information? Thanks.
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