There’s news from Amazon: the Christmas peak is clearly very soon going to be with us and they’re working to improve their capacity by encouraging merchants with slow moving stock to take it out of Amazon FBA storage.
Obviously, even Amazon has only a finite capacity at its many fulfilment centres across the US (and as far as we can see this is a US only measure at the moment, but do let us know if European Amazon FBA is also taking similar measures), so for the final quarter of the year they will be raising charges for storing goods in FBA. Needless to say, it’s important to them to maximise their capacity as much as possible in the run-up to Christmas and Black Friday. As you can see, from the extract of the email below, holding goods will be become significantly more expensive for a period.
But there is also carrot as well as a stick. If you’ve got goods in FBA that maybe aren’t as fast-moving as they would like, there will be a moratorium on the removal fee charges.
Here’s the extract from the email Amazon FBA has sent to users: “Hello from Fulfillment by Amazon,
On October 1, 2017, monthly inventory storage fees will increase from $0.64 per cubic foot to $2.35 per cubic foot for standard-size items and from $0.43 per cubic foot to $1.15 per cubic foot for oversize items for October, November, and December. For a limited time, however, you can remove inventory for free to avoid these previously announced fees.
Starting today, September 19, 2017, FBA is waiving new removal-order fees for inventory that’s currently in U.S. fulfillment centers. Act quickly before normal removal fees apply again.”
This makes an awful lot of sense and is also an apposite opportunity for you to review what you hold in FBA and what it’s costing you. It could well be you’re not managing your stock levels efficiently and it’s no bad thing to be reminded of that.
