Supplying Amazon

jimmii

There's a lot of threads on here about Amazon fba etc but has anyone supplied them on a traditional wholesale basis? They've approached us about doing it so wondering what peoples experiences of going down that route have been!

On first look it looks much the same as dealing with any other reseller just terms are a little more in their favour!

antoinolachtnai

I have heard a little about it, but don't know much. It would be worth talking to some of the large distributors about this if you could.

How come they want to deal with you? There may be some item that they want to get that you have distributorship for and that they can't get any other way.

Maybe it is an item that is exclusive to you that is coming up in their searches?

You would need to understand how you and your upstream suppliers felt about you providing stock to amazon. If you currently have exclusivity, does it make sense to get amazon involved? Will they sell the item internationally and will that have any implications? Sure, they can deliver volume, but is this what you need?

I understand that they very much need you to do things 'their' way, and this is understandable at the scale they are operating. Most important of all, I imagine they will want to be able to set their own price (as is their legal prerogative as an independent business).

jimmii

Yeh the first thing we thought was why us! How did they even find us? I assume they monitor other platforms and combine that with their own search data and just happened to stumble us where we've had some success. They don't seem to be after a particular product they're wanting to take the full range.

Their terms are actually fairly reasonable and you actually get rebate built into the arrangement if they are late paying but they do take an additional cut on top of your ws priced but our margins are more than big enough to swallow that. For those that are interested the way they operate is weekly or twice weekly purchase orders depending on volume once you accept the purchase order you have 4 days to ship to one of the main warehouses.

He brought up their pricing policy as he said obviously most people just assume they just undercut everything but their actual approach is just to match the lowest price on the market so what they would do is just match the price we are currently selling for on another platform.

The brand would be seen as a small quirky craft type brand so being on Amazon may change people's thoughts of it and for those that do notice will possibly think its selling out a bit.

JMR

It sounds to me like a potentially great opportunity. I'd like to receive the same email you did!
Is your only responsibility in the transaction to deliver a bulk order to their fulfillment house within 4 days of receipt of order?
You aren't obliged to handle customer care / returns for Amazon orders?

If the above is accurate and the wholesale price they are demanding you sell to them at still allows you to make a healthy margin and your products are now being offered on a new platform to potentially new customers, I don't see the down side.

I'm not familiar with your products but I wouldn't be worried about customers perceiving you as selling out in some way.

Best of luck with it

jimmii

Yep it's just a standard wholesale relationship initially I assumed it was probably just an invitation to the marketplace or something so was a bit surprised when we went through it over the phone!