I’m a US seller and I have inventory stranded in Canadian FCs. I know Amazon won’t send the inventory back to me in the US if I create a removal order, but I’d also rather not eat the loss of them scrapping the items. I was thinking of contacting a UPS Store in Canada and setting up a mailbox to receive the items and then paying them to pack and reship to me (or, making a trip to Canada to pick up myself). Has anyone done this or have a better solution?
Have you tried a freight forwarder in Canada?
I know they have them all over the US
They give you an address at their location and automatically forward the items to an address you specify.
Did a quick search and found these 2
Be careful. Recalling your inventory from FBA can lead to an indeterminate number of shipments, over an indeterminate period of time.
We all know that the first drop is the highest cost transportation, and 5 shipments will cost you more than 1 shipment with all of the inventory.
Exactly. That’s why I’m hoping that a place like a UPS Store can receive the various shipments and then consolidate them into fewer, denser outbound shipments.
The issue that I can see is how long the UPS Store would be willing to sit on items while they accumulate.
I do NOT do FBA but everything I have read says that they can take weeks/months to process withdrawals.
I have a very good relationship with my local UPS Store and am generally in there a couple times a week. They have been willing to sit on my deliveries/returns for a week and more when we have been traveling, but I have an established relationship built up over more than a decade (and an ownership change!)
The stores I have been in do NOT have unlimited storage space.
The UPS store nearest me holds packages for 7 days. 5 minutes after that, it’s returned to sender.
Indeed, it can take almost a year if you have a lot of stuff. Not sure they would hold anything that long. I have a good relationship with my UPS store as well but I don’t think they would do that for me.
-Ana
Thanks for the suggestions and cautions. I don’t know if Amazon Canada is different, but for the handful of removal orders I’ve done in the U.S., everything has arrived within a month and each week would be enough to make up a decent (45-50 pound) consolidated shipment or more back to me. I’ll definitely report back with results from whatever path I choose.
Quick question - was your product manufactured in China?
I’m in Canada, and my shipper/broker now requires all items going to the US be prominently labelled with country of manufacture. At this time they are not accepting items manufactured in China.
No, it was made in the USA. My packages are prominently labeled as such.
Update: Got a notice from Amazon Canada that my slow-moving inventory would be destroyed in a month. After striking out with finding a friend of a friend in Canada and discussing with a UPS Store manager in Canada, I’ve decided on option 3: Book a hotel room in Canada and ship the product there. In order to have my arrival coincide with the products’, I opted to use MCF to get the product out of the FCs and to the hotel. I’ve shipped to hotels while doing trade shows, so I’m not expecting a problem on that end (all 37 products would fill a broom closet).
Where I wasn’t expecting a problem (though I should have) was with the timeliness of MCF. Their estimated ship date was 9/30 with “guaranteed” delivery date of 10/6. As of today, only 2 items had shipped. I started a chat with a rep who seemed competent and, while on the chat, some (but not all) shipment notices started rolling in. She apologized for the issue and stated that all items would still arrive by 10/6 (color me skeptical).
Thankfully, I paid a little extra for a hotel reservation that can be changed, so I’ll probably push it out a day or two depending on how the tracking looks on Sunday.
Why did you send your items to FBA Canada? Did it work out for you, in the long run? What are you selling? How far do you live from Canada? A short drive by car, or a flight and a hotel?
Please keep us posted, but for competitive reasons, you might want to answer in generalities.
It always galls me that the few books I ship to Canada cost almost as much to ship as do books to the UK and the EU. I live less than 200 miles from the Canadian border.
@SellerFeller I am curious as well. I live about 3 hours from Ontario and I don’t know that it would be worth it (unless I was already going there to pick up some shows and do some tourist-type stuff).
I’ve never considered selling on Amazon.ca before as I can’t imagine anyone being able to pay the selling price I’d have to have to cover all of the extra expenses associated with selling there.
It’s not terrible and can generate decent revenue. I found that there are Amazon sellers reselling some of my products on Amazon.ca (at quite a markup), so I knew that a market existed. I let my UPS rep get all of the import requirements set up for my account and now I sell my top three products via Canadian FBA. Probably the biggest headache (and thus the reason for this post) is getting damaged or discontinued inventor back from the Canadian FCs as Amazon won’t ship it back to the U.S.
If you want to see if others are reselling your products on Amazon.ca, just open any of your listings using the short link found on the Manage Inventory page and change the “.com” to “.ca” and then look at the buying options.
Good questions. Answered in order:
- I noticed a non-trivial amount of sales to Canada on my website and also discovered my products being resold on Amazon.ca when I started fielding support questions from there. I also think Amazon was pushing the Canadian marketplace about this time, so the stars were aligning. I found that Canada has roughly the same population as California and asked myself if I’d put in the effort to gain another California and the answer was yes.
- Yes, very much so. At its peak, Amazon.ca was my second largest channel, behind Amazon.com and ahead of my website and a large distributor. My website has since surpassed it due to better than normal growth on the website and neglect (my fault) of Amazon.ca.
- The category in which I sell is Automotive. The parts are heavy, so shipping individual orders to Canada can be cost prohibitive but in bulk makes more sense.
- I’m eight hours from the closest point in Canada, which is Niagara Falls.
- I will drive it and stay the night in the hotel to which I’m shipping the product (national chain on the outskirts of Niagara Falls). I’m a former truck driver, so an eight hour drive is a piece of cake. Plus, I like driving.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
My stuff is being sold overseas. If there’s a market for it, other sellers are free to buy it from me to sell it overseas. I am not going to go through the trouble of exporting it.
There it is… Any policy or thinking that limits sales is no longer a policy….
A wise old CFO once said that at a company meeting I was at.
Sure, if you’re talking millions. If he makes 3 new sales a year, the expansion would lose more money than it would make. He wouldn’t be so wise then, would he?
It’s more than 3 new sales a year. It’s like 4 or 5, easy!
I’m sure you’re fine. My answer was to ASV_Vites, who seemed to imply I was leaving money on the table because I don’t want to export. He’s judging small-time handmade sellers on the same level as corporate America. The two cannot operate the same way.