Not sure how many of my fellow FBA sellers saw the below but I just did and it scared the ■■■■ out of me. This has all the hallmarks of Amazon pushing us into their AWD program for Q4 and possibly beyond.
The way this reads to me is it’s going to be 4 weeks on Capacity in Q4. Everything else has to go to AWD. According to the AWD info page, anything with an expiration date is excluded so we can’t even use it if we wanted to.
I’ve been seeing that on the shipment page. It sounds more like a sales pitch than a directive at this point, but be on the lookout for it to morph in the future.
“You can bid on extra storage by paying a reservation fee”? Yikes.
It would not surprise me to see AWD participation become an FBA access requirement. Another fee, required bidding, SMH
Perhaps a new > 4 weeks fee is coming to serve as an inducement.
I thought this as well.
I don’t exactly really understand what AWD is. I was going through lowering prices of my old FBA inventory and a few of them said “Save money” if I was storing it in AWD, and I’m trying to figure it out, but it’s all over my head!
If you don’t want my inventory in long term storage, offer me free returns, I’ll store it my self.
I don’t think they’re going to force us FBA sellers into it, but with Amazon being Amazon, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do at some point in the future.
If that happens, screw them - I won’t send more than 4 weeks of inventory and am willing to throttle sales not to run out of stock or to avoid the low-inventory-level-fee. I’m already operating in a similar way, which I think has benefits - even though sales might be lower, you get better cash flow (especially if terms with most suppliers are Net 30), have less capital tied up to owned inventory and, therefore, are risking less of it if anything happens to your account.
Your post reminded me of the low inventory fee… They max us out at 30 days and charge 97 cents a unit on top of everything else because you can’t keep 30 days (the law). Wouldn’t that be funny. Now it doesn’t make as much sense going back to my original post upthread.
AWD was someone’s brain child that failed miserably because nobody trusts Amazon with anything, especially anything new. In theory, it’s not so bad if you read what it’s supposed to be.
The problem is you are turning over control of your business to Amazon. There’s some algorithm favoring this listing or that over your own, guess who’s listing is getting properly restocked to optimum levels.
I’m looking at this from a high volume seller POV, in terms of units (sadly on only a couple of our listings). In order to succeed on Amazon with a listing that sells or has the potential to sell 5K-10K units per month, you must keep a min of 12 weeks of inventory at FBA to get same day / next day Prime delivery.
In a category like ours, where there are 60 items just like it, the one that can get there on the same day or next day wins, every single time, with the exception of loyal customers that are happy with the brand. There are a lot of those buyers but just as many, if not more, that only care about cost and time.
I’ve been doing this long enough to understand this with various real life scenarios that just happen.
I don’t trust Amazon and their intentions.
@ASV_Vites didn’t you say that you wouldn’t qualify for AWD anyway? Are they making it available to anyone now? I know there were requirements that we don’t fit when it first launched. I’m confused that they’re trying to push it on everyone now.
-Ana
There are many categories / sizes that AWD does not allow.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GGTMT4PTMUMHDS6B
Yeah, that’s why I asked because Steve had said in another thread that his product didn’t qualify. I don’t think our would either but I’m not interested at all seeing the poor performance and usual crap other sellers have experienced so far.
-Ana
Funny thing is yes, it’s not supposed to be avail for perishable products (anything with a shelf life), but system is saying it’s now available to us. I don’t see a scenario where we would ever use it. Something tells me that AWD space is less conditioned than reg FC’s.
Just heard back from SAS. No comment on whether or not things will really tighten up in Q4 but he did let me know that AWS is being opened up to perishable product in Sept and the program is being tested out now with some sellers.
One of those sellers is us but nobody ever told us which is why we do have access on the backend - not like we would use it. That explains that at least.
Run. Run far. Run fast.
I wouldn’t touch that with a 10ft pole. If Amazon won’t even FIFO in their FCs, I can’t imagine them FIFOing at AWD.
Did you notice that on shipping plans that there’s now an option to add lot #?
Interesting. Maybe Amazon is actually putting lot traceability / FIFO in place finally. That would be nice.
And no, we would never use AWD. It might as well not be an option.
With that said, I see it being forced on all FBA sellers eventually…
Yep, and that expansion from the AWD Expiration Date Pilot Program was (more or less) publicly announced by the FMT-CMT’s Ricardo over in the NSFE 091824:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/c7c2788f-adbc-4257-8d4b-04bee4c0df86
In a not particularly-common development, the Editorial Team has sought fit to update the SHC (“Seller Help Content”) page “Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) product eligibility” (link) from what appeared when our friend @VTR linked it upthread (Post #8, 072024) in a relatively-timely fashion.
Conversely, in a particularly-common fashion, early reports in various seller-discussion venues suggest that there remain kinks that’ve yet to be worked out - which of course won’t surprise most anyone who has much time in grade regarding Sailing The River.
It’s nice to see December’s Capacity Limits pumped back up to normal so the force isn’t yet…
The logistics professionals Amazon hired to set up FBA designed a process and fee structure that assume the sellers were competent professionals, able to forecast their sales and would manage the inventory in the FCs.
They, of course, were wrong. Amazon attempted to deal with the issue by eliminating the free storage for one copy of a book, and raising the long term storage fee, a wholely inadequate solution.
It has been followed by higher long-term storage fees and step function increase in LTSF,
AWD reflects the large number of sellers who have no storage other than in the Amazon FC. It offers a storage option for what is temporary dead inventory.
As always, one cannot rely on Amazon, They cannot manage to get the transfer from AWD to FC without stock outages on a consistant basis.
Capacity Manager appear to give a seller a chance to throw money at the problem - often the best solution.
There are many sellers who should be forced into AWD, but it should not apply to all. Were I to guess whether a majority deserved to be forced into AWD, I would be hard pressed to know since there are so many sellers who ship one order to FBA which never sells and feeds the liquidators.
If it was my choice, and the legal team agreed it was legal, I would require all offshore sellers to participate in AWD.
