Sales on Amazon, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms have kept increasing these years. In particular, under the impact of COVID-19, people are gradually changing the way they shop in the past and choosing online shopping. In this environment, more and more people choose to become amazon sellers.
In 2021, sales for independent businesses selling on Amazon grew over 50% from 2019. Third-party sellers account for 50% of total sales on Amazon. In 2020, Amazon generated roughly $80.5 billion in third-party seller services. More than 130,000 third-party sellers surpassed $100,000 in sales.
FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon, which means Amazon manages all of the seller’s inventory. In this way, the seller must find profitable products and ship them to the FBA warehouse. Amazon will take care of the rest, like delivering products to customers and other customer services.
We’re not here to tell you how to become an Amazon FBA seller, but how an agent can help an Amazon FBA seller take his business to the next level. And we’ll discuss it through a real case study.
Meet Eric:
Eric sells household items on Amazon US since 2019. In the beginning, he sourced the goods from Alibaba and AliExpress. He spends a lot of time and energy finding and working out new products and suppliers.
Gradually, he found some problems that suppliers could not provide customized label services and customized outer packaging services in small batches. As the product category is expanding, too much energy needs to be scattered to communicate with each supplier. The most important issue is the quality check. We all know how much negative impact an eCommerce seller has if we get a bad review.
When he was worried about how to solve these problems, he was introduced to Style Sourcing by a friend. After communication, we believe that we were the right one who can help him. Right now, we have already worked for 3 years, year 2020, he shipped 2 full containers. In the year 2021, we shipped 4 containers out for him. This year, we believe, his business will be even better.
How does all this work?
#1: Help to Source Profitable Product and New Product Development
Aftermarket research about the demands of household items on Amazon US, and studying the price points and profit. He sends us some photos and links from Amazon and Alibaba he wants and requires samples.
We find suitable products from verified suppliers for him and order samples. After 3-4 days, we got all the samples, we will send photos and details of the products to him for evaluation. Also, send to him by express if necessary.
# 2: Saving the Cost
Our professional agent will source online and offline to find good quality products at a very competitive price. Compared to the price customers order from Alibaba or AliExpress, we can save a lot for them without sacrificing the quality.
(The price of multifunction choppers on Alibaba.)
(The price of multifunction choppers on AliExpress.)
Of course, we are not only focused on the low price, we will evaluate the suppliers and also samples to select the most suitable for our customers.
Eric never ordered a new product of more than 200pcs, for some of the new items, he may only try dozens to test the market. He no needs to worry about the MOQ, as Style Source will find the supplier who got ready stock at a lower MOQ for him.
In this case, he can not only lower his import cost but also trial and error costs.
# 3: Quality Inspection
After we got the products from various suppliers, we will carry out a thorough inspection and issue the inspection report to our customer.
Quality check is the most important part, if the defective products are found and repaired overseas, the cost will be several times as much to be repaired here in China.
For the products shipped directly to Amazon FBA, the defective goods sent to the customer, the bad reviews are harmful to the ranking. During our inspection, we always find some defects in bulk goods, no matter whether they are in inventory or production.
You can imagine all these defectives shipped all the way to Eric in the US. He paid all the product costs, shipping fee, duty, and tax…There is no way to return these defectives back to China. He needs to have people fix in the US. If these were shipped to the customer’s hand, Eric said he may be out of business already.
In our facility, when found the defectives, we will send the defects back to the supplier for replacement. For the mirror defects, we will hire laborers to fix them in our facility.
The labor cost is 18-20rmb per hour which is around 3usd/hr here in Yiwu. So most customers are willing to pay extra to get goods full inspection.
#4: Private label and Custom packaging
Because of the low quantity, most suppliers are not willing to do private labels or change packaging for Eric. Especially for the inventory, they sell what it is. Even if you said can pay some extra, they will still think it too troublesome. However, even part of the supplier is ok to do this work. They may not treat seriously, especially since laborers are not known English. If the supplier did not explain and guide labor well, they probably make mistakes.
However, in order to better serve our customers, meet their personalized needs, and promote their business. We are highly welcome this kind of trouble.
We help to print the label, hangtag, and master label for Amazon sellers. Also for some customers, they want to put a” Thank You letter” into each packaging, no matter what’s the quantity, we can always take care of it.
#5: Save on Shipping fee
When the goods were delivered to our warehouse, we finished the inspection and labeling. Our team will repack the goods into a more suitable carton to save the shipping fee.
Eric ordered one batch of cloth face masks in 2021, we received the goods from the supplier in carton packing. 200pcs carton size is 60*50*40cm, and the actual weight is 18kg, however, the chargeable weight is 24kg/ctn. After we evaluated the products and the packaging, we suggested he do vacuum packing(carton vacuum packing), which makes the carton size 50*40*40cm and saves 6kg per carton. Make the volume weight shipment to actual weight, save 25% shipping fee for him.
(The cloth face masks are bulky in volume, then we did in carton vacuum packing to save shipping fee)
This is the whole story about how we helped Eric to grow his Amazon business and save his cost. Hope this article can give you some thoughts. If there is any other advice about further improving the job, welcome to discuss with us.
