Way back in the day, merchants would set up stalls of their wares and sell to whoever walked by. Sometimes they’d travel to neighbouring towns and villages to conduct business or set up a booth at a yearly fair, but it was all essentially through one channel. Those days are long gone and we show no signs of returning, as omni-channel commerce has firmly taken over. But how does this tie into Amazon, which already houses its own mega-power way of selling? They have a way of supporting multiple channels, so let’s take a look and see how you can maximise on everything Amazon has to offer.
Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfilment
Let’s look at channels in a slightly different way: instead of using the traditional concepts of a brick-and-mortar store supplemented with an on-line store, such as Walmart has done, imagine your own on-line store and using Amazon’s services. You still retain all the benefits of having your own site, such as name, site design, support and return policy, and more, but now you can also tap into Amazon’s tentacles of power, too.
One of the most common ways of going about this is with Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), where you send your products to a central location and Amazon takes care of shipping them for you. Within FBA is a tool called Multi-Channel Fulfilment, which operates much the same way. Your inventory stays in one central location — just like FBA — and you notify Amazon of shipping requests — again, just like FBA. Once you submit your request, you’ll have an estimated delivery date you can pass onto your customers, plus a tracking number that can be found in the “Amazon Fulfilled Order” part of your seller account.
The Delivery Process
Brick-and-mortar stores have a fairly simple “delivery” process: the buyer picks out what they like, pays for it, and then takes it home. Excluding things like home delivery or store-to-store transferring, brick-and-mortar stores are about as simple as it gets.
But when talking about multi-channel shopping, such as selling your merchandise through apps or on a website, the process becomes a little trickier. Now you have to take into consideration things like delivery time (Standard? Expedited? Air? Ground?), if you’ll provide different options, and how much — if anything — your buyers are willing to pay for the fastest option.
When talking about delivery cost, we see one of the big benefits in using Multi-Channel Fulfilment, as Amazon makes it incredibly easy for you. Instead of offering up a piecemeal plan where you’re charged different prices for every little thing, they bundle together the following, with different rates according to package size and weight, and delivery source and destination:
- Shipping
- Picking and packing
- Packaging materials
- Full insurance (for either Amazon’s or the carrier’s fault)
Don’t Forget These Other Perks
Going with both Amazon for Multi-Channel Fulfilment and your own site can offer you the best of all worlds, and these are just a few of the many benefits you’ll enjoy:
- Opportunity to focus on growing your business internationally with Amazon’s option to deliver your products to all 27 European Union countries
- Maximum control is in your hands when it comes to personalising your packing slips, deciding the intensity of deliveries during really busy times during the year, how and when something gets returned, what kind of customer support will be present, and deciding how long you’ll keep your inventory at Amazon’s central pool (you can have it returned any time you want)
- Never having to worry about the challenging logistics of storing your merchandise and keeping super organized when it comes to shipping them
- The ability to use any number of integration models for your business, like Seller Central Order Injection, Flat-file order injection, and various APIs for direct integration.
There’s no reason in the world why you can’t maintain a successful omni-channel theme with your business, and don’t have to see Amazon as a competitor. Instead, you should be viewing Amazon as a complement to your efforts, such as using Multi-Channel Fulfilment, which offers plenty of perks to help you take your business to infinity and beyond. In fact, you could reach tens of millions of potential customers in an instant if you sold your wares on Amazon too. If you do choose that route, be sure to have a repricing solution that will keep you super competitive and in the hunt for the Buy Box. RepricerExpress offers a 15 day free trial so you can try before you buy!
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