The Amazon Seller Flex program was introduced recently in the UK after trials in both India and the US.
The solution offers shipping and storage fee benefits to the seller as well as excellent stock control and inventory management solution.
In its purest form, the sellers’ listings appear as they are fulfilled by Amazon, when in reality they are fulfilled from the seller’s own warehouse or partnered 3PL and Amazon collect the products and orders through their own (or partnered) transport network on a daily basis and deliver directly to the customer.
Your listing will carry the FBA / Prime badge meaning you’ll have more chance of securing the BuyBox as well as shoppers trusting you more, therefore increasing your sales.
You don’t need to send your goods to Amazon, therefore saving on transport costs as well as storage fees and forking out for any removals you need to do from Amazon – all your stock is held in yours or your 3PL’s warehouse.
As your items are not travelling as much, the carbon footprint is much smaller – for example, if you are sending items into one of Amazon’s Fulfilment Centres via FBA, there’s the carbon footprint from your warehouse to Amazon’s FC, then once in Amazon’s FC, the goods could be transported to another FC or to a local hub, then onto the final mile courier.
With Seller Flex, your orders are collected by the freight forwarder and miss out Amazon’s Fulfilment Centre completely, saving carbon footprint per order.
Once configured, as a seller, your warehouse will have an Amazon Warehouse node, which effectively is a node within Amazon’s network of Fulfilment Centres and you’ll be using Amazon’s warehouse management solution which is rich with features.
Amazon’s systems effectively manage the collection of the orders via their own or partnered network of freight forwarders.
In addition to the Seller Flex application, Amazon also give you access to their Freight Management Console (FMC) which details the times and types of vehicles that are inbound to your location. Additionally if there are any issues within the network (eg lateness, need more than allotted vehicle(s) ), the FMC allows the user to raise cases within the network – our experience thus far has been excellent with immediate updates and responses to any cases we have raised.
In our experience, large, heavy and bulky products such as large TVs, whitegoods such as Fridges, washing Machines etc. as well as large items of furniture, such as beds, wardrobes etc. are more economical via the Seller Flex program as these items, if sent to an Amazon Fulfilment Centre via the FBA program will incur expensive outbound delivery plus extortionate storage fees as well as increasingly high removal costs, if you need to remove your slow moving inventory.
This is an invite only program from Amazon and the criteria, although not confirmed are :
These numbers are only a rough estimate and may change from time to time – details from Amazon, at this moment, are a little scarce.
If you think you are eligible for the program but have not been approached or invited by Amazon, please reach out to your Amazon Partner Manager or contact the Customer Care team or raise a case within Amazon.
We’ve been providing Seller Flex services for several clients throughout 2022 and are looking to grow further – there is no additional training needed and as an Amazon Seller, partnering with Lama Fulfilment, who is already fully conversant with the program should give your application more credibility. We already have daily collections via Amazon’s transport network.
Additionally, we have wrapped a number of services around the Seller Flex program mainly serial number tracking and scanning as well as efficient data transfer once a Seller Flex/FBA order has been fulfilled.
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