In Australia, multi-SKU fulfilment has just been announced for eBay Fulfilment by Orange Connex. What this means is that rather than sending in all variants for a listing, sellers can choose which variants to fulfil themselves and which they should hand over to eBay Fulfilment.
The reason that this matters is that it’s all about sales velocity and fulfilment costs. Fulfilment charges largely consist of two parts – a cost to pick pack and ship and a cost to store. Fulfilment works best when there is a continual flow of product entering the fulfilment house in bulk and rapidly being sold in high volume. This keeps the storage costs as low as possible and is why fulfilment is best suited for fast moving lines.
With the introduction of multi-SKU fulfilment, eBay are giving sellers variant level decision making ability regarding which inventory is best suited for fulfilment and which to keep inhouse. For example, on a clothing line your best selling sizes might be small, medium, large and XL. Multi-SKU fulfilment enables you to place these sizes in fulfilment while keeping the slower moving XXL, XXXL, and XS away from the fixed storage fee costs.
From the buyer’s perspective, they are be able to see where the item is being posted from, postage costs, postage service and estimated delivery dates depending on the particular SKU they’re looking at. Having products in eBay Fulfilment are likely to show up higher in search results with faster delivery and get automatic eBay Plus eligibility. This could have a halo effect and benefit your SKUs not in fulfilment – they’ll be on the same listing.
We’re hoping that Multi-SKU fulfilment will come to eBay Fulfilment by Orange Connex in the UK and Germany, but if you sell in Australia then it’s already available to you there.
