Amazon Supply Chain Connect is a new system to help Fulfilment by Amazon merchants get their inventory into an Amazon fulfilment centre (FC) whilst also saving sellers time and hopefully money.
As it stands stands Sellers who use Amazon FBA have two options when it comes to get product into an FC. You can take delivery of your inventory from your supplier or manufacturer and then package up you shipment and sort out delivery yourself. Or you can have your suppliers send your products directly to the FC. In that situation you also need to organise delivery.
With Amazon Supply Chain Connect you get a third option. When your suppliers are ready to send your order, you can empower them to access an Amazon portal and choose from options directly with Amazon to ship the goods to an FC.
Obviously this could bring benefits of scale and be cheaper if consignments from similar areas are shipped together or if Amazon use their own network to get the product from supplier to FC.
As a screengrab of an email to Amazon sellers, seen on Twitter, says of Amazon Supply Chain Connect says of the system:
“– Supplier portal – A central supplier portal where selected suppliers can process your FBA shipments.
– Faster inbound – Suppliers can enter box content information and immediately download FBA shipment and item labels eliminating the need for back and forth communication resulting in reduced lead time.
– Better performance – Suppliers have the tools they need to fulfill shipments with greater accuracy, and gain a better understanding of the Amazon shipping processes.”
At the moment it seems that the option is available exclusively to US Sellers and may even be on an invite-only basis and in a trial phase.
The video below from Amazon explains the how the system works in greater detail.
One Response
Why not just give Amazon your supplier details and sensitive business information then let them negotiate prices – may as well cut us out completely!