Amazon have released some interesting statistics, the outstanding one being that sellers shipped more than 1 billion items world wide through Fulfilment by Amazon in 2015. Using FBA, sellers from more than 100 different countries around the world fulfilled orders to customers in 185 countries.
On Cyber Monday alone, sellers received over 23 million orders. Another interesting data point is that during the holiday season, individuals and businesses selling on Amazon sold to more than 80% of Amazon customers worldwide who ordered a physical item. That means that Amazon retails share of sales was down at the 20% mark, excluding electronically delivered goods such as Kindle downloads.
FBA items shipped worldwide grew more than 60 percent year-over-year during the holiday season and Amazon say that active sellers worldwide using the FBA service grew more than 50% year-over-year. This is reflected in anecdotal stories we’ve heard from the SME sellers we’ve spoken to.
If you’re not already loading substantial quantities of product into FBA, then 2016 is the year to seriously consider doing so. Don’t forget that Amazon are constantly recruiting buyers to their Prime program and Prime customers will be looking for FBA products as a preference as they’ll receive free carriage. Regardless of the increased cost of shipping to FBA with UPS, the increased sell through rates will almost certainly justify the costs.
