Sebastian Gunningham, Senior Vice President, Amazon Merchant Services gave an overview of Amazon services this morning at Catalyst. In truth there was nothing earth-shattering in his presentation for anyone familiar with Amazon services – Selling on Amazon, Webstores, Enterprise Stores, Product Ads and Fulfillment by Amazon.
However there was, as is often the case, one gem of an idea that made sitting through a sales pitch worthwhile. Sebastian made the point that Fulfillment by Amazon is an ideal way for a merchant to expand overseas.
Fulfillment by Amazon allows sellers to ship stock in bulk to an Amazon warehouse, and from then on Amazon with distribute it when sold. They’ll even ship product which isn’t actually sold on an Amazon site so the merchant could even list on eBay or their own website.
The service is available in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. With 500 US merchants listening to the presentation I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of them ship container loads of product into Amazon in the UK. With the advantageous £/$ exchange rate it enables them to establish a UK presence with no infrastructure investment.
Equally for UK sellers who want to take advantage of the US market placing product in Amazon’s US warehouse would cut shipping times to days instead of weeks. If your dispatch eBay DSR is being impacted this is a real opportunity to exploit overseas markets with prompt international delivery. With eBay DSRs becoming more and more critical this is an option worth considering.
