Why the Search Terms Report is Essential for Sponsored Brands
Choosing the right keywords can be tricky. You want to reach shoppers most likely to buy, not waste your budget on terms that don’t convert. The Keyword Report shows you exactly which keywords are working and which aren’t, helping you:
Understand which search terms lead to sales and which don’t
Make smarter decisions about bidding and budget
Find new keyword ideas to grow your brand reach
By seeing actual data on impressions, clicks, and conversions, you’ll spend your money more wisely and gain an edge in the marketplace.
Key Metrics Featured in the Sponsored Brands Search TermsReport
The report includes a few essential metrics. Understanding them will help you spot trends and opportunities:
Impressions: How often does your ad show up?
Clicks & Click-Through Rate (CTR): Are people who see your ad clicking it?
Cost-Per-Click (CPC): How much you pay each time someone clicks.
Conversions & Conversion Rate: How many clicks lead to sales.
New-to-Brand Sales: How many first-time customers your brand is winning.
These are not the only metrics, using the Openbridge AI Data Copilot, you can see the complete Sponsored Brands Search Term Report schema:
With the various report metrics, you can see what’s working and what’s not. For example, a high CTR but a low conversion rate might mean shoppers are curious but unconvinced. A strong New-to-Brand number suggests you’re drawing fresh eyes to your brand.
Identifying High-Performing and Low-Performing Keywords
Once you have the report, it’s time to dig in. Looking for winners? Check for:
High CTR and conversions
Low CPC
Strong New-to-Brand sales
These are the keywords you may want to invest more in. Conversely, consider lowering bids or pausing keywords with low CTR, high costs, or weak sales. For example, if “organic dog treats” drive strong conversions while “healthy dog snacks” barely get clicks, focus on “organic dog treats (seeAmazon Ads Learning Console — Optimization Tips).
Leveraging Match Types for Better Targeting
Match types control how closely a shopper’s search must match your keyword. If the Keyword Report shows:
Exact match terms are converting well, you might raise bids on those terms.
Broad match terms are getting clicks but not sales; it might be time to refine them.
Phrase match terms doing well might be worth testing as exact matches to fine-tune targeting.
Using the report’s data, you can adjust which match types you emphasize. For instance, switching a high-performing broad match keyword to an exact match can focus your reach and reduce wasted ad spend.
Integrating Insights from the Search Term Report into Campaign Management
The Keyword Report isn’t just a bunch of numbers — it’s a roadmap. Use it to:
Adjust bids: Spend more on keywords that drive profits and spend less on ones that don’t.
Revise budgets: Shift more of the budget to performing the best campaigns.
Add or remove keywords: Add fresh keywords or remove those that don’t measure up.
Make it a habit to review your Keyword Report regularly. Checking it every month or quarter can help you stay on top of trends and respond to changes quickly. Pairing these insights with other Amazon ads reports — like the Search Term Report — gives you a complete picture of your campaign performance.
Expanding Keyword Lists with Search Term Insights
Your Search Term Report can also help you grow. You can add those as new keywords by reviewing the search terms that deliver strong results. On the flip side, you can also add low-performing search terms as negative keywords to block them, saving money. This constant refining helps you reach the right shoppers and improve your campaign health.
How to Be a Data-Driven Advertiser: Manual or Automation?
Here’s how to manually get your Search Term Report:
Log in: Access your Amazon Advertising console.
Find Reports: Click on the “Reports” tab in your dashboard.
Choose Sponsored Brands: Select “Sponsored Brands” and then pick “Keyword” as the type.
Select Timeframe: Pick “daily” or “summary” data.
Download: Hit “Run Report” and then download the file (usually in CSV format).
Looking to automate the flow of these reports?
Getting Started with Keyword Report Automation
Ditch the messy, manual reporting for Sponsored Brands Keyword Reports. Automated data feeds guide data-driven decision-making to improve off-Amazon digital marketing campaigns. Leverage attribution insights to refine strategies, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Openbridge will unify and deliver performance data to data lakes or warehouses like Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, and Amazon Athena, giving you a single source of truth. This unified data can turbocharge reporting and analytics tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, SAP, Alteryx, dbt, Azure Data Factory, and Qlik Sense.
Why the Search Terms Report is Essential for Sponsored Brands
Choosing the right keywords can be tricky. You want to reach shoppers most likely to buy, not waste your budget on terms that don’t convert. The Keyword Report shows you exactly which keywords are working and which aren’t, helping you:
Understand which search terms lead to sales and which don’t
Make smarter decisions about bidding and budget
Find new keyword ideas to grow your brand reach
By seeing actual data on impressions, clicks, and conversions, you’ll spend your money more wisely and gain an edge in the marketplace.
Key Metrics Featured in the Sponsored Brands Search TermsReport
The report includes a few essential metrics. Understanding them will help you spot trends and opportunities:
Impressions: How often does your ad show up?
Clicks & Click-Through Rate (CTR): Are people who see your ad clicking it?
Cost-Per-Click (CPC): How much you pay each time someone clicks.
Conversions & Conversion Rate: How many clicks lead to sales.
New-to-Brand Sales: How many first-time customers your brand is winning.
These are not the only metrics, using the Openbridge AI Data Copilot, you can see the complete Sponsored Brands Search Term Report schema:
With the various report metrics, you can see what’s working and what’s not. For example, a high CTR but a low conversion rate might mean shoppers are curious but unconvinced. A strong New-to-Brand number suggests you’re drawing fresh eyes to your brand.
Identifying High-Performing and Low-Performing Keywords
Once you have the report, it’s time to dig in. Sort or filter the spreadsheet by your key metrics. Looking for winners? Check for:
High CTR and conversions
Low CPC
Strong New-to-Brand sales
These are the keywords you may want to invest more in. Conversely, consider lowering bids or pausing keywords with low CTR, high costs, or weak sales. For example, if “organic dog treats” drive strong conversions while “healthy dog snacks” barely get clicks, focus on “organic dog treats (seeAmazon Ads Learning Console — Optimization Tips).
Leveraging Match Types for Better Targeting
Match types control how closely a shopper’s search must match your keyword. If the Keyword Report shows:
Exact match terms are converting well, you might raise bids on those terms.
Broad match terms are getting clicks but not sales; it might be time to refine them.
Phrase match terms doing well might be worth testing as exact matches to fine-tune targeting.
Using the report’s data, you can adjust which match types you emphasize. For instance, switching a high-performing broad match keyword to an exact match can focus your reach and reduce wasted ad spend.
Integrating Insights from the Search Term Report into Campaign Management
The Keyword Report isn’t just a bunch of numbers — it’s a roadmap. Use it to:
Adjust bids: Spend more on keywords that drive profits and spend less on ones that don’t.
Revise budgets: Shift more of the budget to performing the best campaigns.
Add or remove keywords: Add fresh keywords or remove those that don’t measure up.
Make it a habit to review your Keyword Report regularly. Checking it every month or quarter can help you stay on top of trends and respond to changes quickly. Pairing these insights with other Amazon ads reports — like the Search Term Report — gives you a complete picture of your campaign performance.
Expanding Keyword Lists with Search Term Insights
Your Search Term Report can also help you grow. You can add those as new keywords by reviewing the search terms that deliver strong results. On the flip side, you can also add low-performing search terms as negative keywords to block them, saving money. This constant refining helps you reach the right shoppers and improve your campaign health.
How to Be a Data-Driven Advertiser: Manual or Automation?
Here’s how to manually get your Search Term Report:
Log in: Access your Amazon Advertising console.
Find Reports: Click on the “Reports” tab in your dashboard.
Choose Sponsored Brands: Select “Sponsored Brands” and then pick “Keyword” as the type.
Select Timeframe: Pick “daily” or “summary” data.
Download: Hit “Run Report” and then download the file (usually in CSV format).
Looking to automate the flow of these reports?
Getting Started with Keyword Report Automation
Ditch the messy, manual reporting for Sponsored Brands Keyword Reports. Automated data feeds guide data-driven decision-making to improve off-Amazon digital marketing campaigns. Leverage attribution insights to refine strategies, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Openbridge will unify and deliver performance data to data lakes or warehouses like Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, and Amazon Athena, giving you a single source of truth. This unified data can turbocharge reporting and analytics tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, SAP, Alteryx, dbt, Azure Data Factory, and Qlik Sense.
If you’re selling products on Amazon and running ads, you’re probably familiar with the importance of tracking and optimizing your ad performance. But how can you know if your efforts are paying off? That’s where the Amazon Advertising Sponsored Product Campaign Report comes in.
Whether new to Amazon advertising or looking to sharpen your strategy, understanding these reports can make a huge difference in maximizing your ad spending and growing your business.
Understanding the Campaign Report for Sponsored Products
The Campaign Report for Sponsored Products is a comprehensive tool designed to show how well your ads perform over a specified period. You can use it to evaluate everything from daily performance to monthly trends, allowing you to make informed decisions on improving your campaigns.
This report summarizes the performance of your Sponsored Products ads across different campaigns. It tracks crucial metrics and helps you analyze the effectiveness of your ad strategies. You can use it to:
Track your ad spend
See how many impressions (views) your ads are getting
Measure how often people are clicking on your ads
Evaluate how much revenue your ads are generating
In short, the Campaign Report is your one-stop shop for tracking how well your ads are doing and what changes need to be made.
Types of Data Available in the Report
The Sponsored Product campaign report offers a variety of data types that can be helpful depending on how deep you want to dive into your ad performance. When you drill down into your report, you’ll see a variety of metrics that give a complete view of your campaign’s performance. Key metrics include:
Impressions: Understanding impressions can help you gauge the reach of your ads. If your impressions are low, it might indicate that your ads aren’t being shown to enough people.
Clicks: Clicks are a critical metric. A high click-through rate (CTR) generally means your ad appeals to customers. If clicks are low, your ad needs better call-to-action or more engaging visuals.
Spend: This metric shows how much money you’ve invested in the campaign. Tracking spend is essential for understanding whether you’re getting a good return on your investment.
Sales: Sales data is crucial in determining the effectiveness of your ads. If you get lots of clicks but low sales, your landing pages or product listings may need improvement.
ACoS and RoAS: These two metrics go hand-in-hand. A low ACoS means you’re spending less on ads than the sales generated, while a high ROAS shows that your advertising dollars are being used effectively.
If you want a real-time AI-driven Amazon Advertising data copilot, the Openbridge AI Data Copilot can get you there fast:
How to Use Campaign Reports to Optimize Ad Performance
As you continue using these reports, remember that consistent analysis and optimization are the keys to success. Regularly review your campaigns, make necessary changes, and continue testing new strategies. The more you engage with your campaign data, the better your results will be.
Identify High-Performing Campaigns The first step is to identify which campaigns are doing well. Look for campaigns with high sales and a low ACoS. These campaigns are performing effectively, and consider increasing your budget for them or scaling your efforts.
Spotting Underperforming Campaigns If some campaigns have high ACoS or low sales, it might be time to re-evaluate. Here’s what you can do to improve underperforming campaigns:
Adjust your bids: If your ads aren’t getting enough impressions, you might need to increase your bid.
Change your targeting: Try targeting different keywords or your product targeting to reach a more relevant audience.
Update your ad copy: Sometimes, the wording or images in your ads might not resonate with customers. Test different versions to see what works best.
Adjusting Campaign Settings Once you’ve reviewed your data, it’s time to make adjustments. Consider:
Reallocating your budget: If a particular campaign performs well, consider increasing its budget while cutting back on less effective ones.
Modifying your targeting: Targeting the right audience is key. Use your report data to see which keywords or products generate the best results and focus more on those.
Optimizing your bidding strategy: If certain keywords are performing better than others, increase your bid for those keywords to ensure your ads get shown more often.
Getting Started with Amazon Ads Sponsored Products Data Automation
Ditch the messy, manual reporting for the Amazon Ads Sponsored Product Campaign Report. Automated data feeds guide data-driven decision-making to improve off-Amazon digital marketing campaigns. Leverage insights to refine strategies, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Openbridge will unify and deliver performance data to leading data lakes or cloud warehouses like Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, and Amazon Athena for an analytics-ready single source of truth to fuel informed decisions on brand building strategy, media, and customer demand for Amazon.
With your data unified, start to turbocharge reporting, analytics, and business intelligence tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, SAP, Alteryx, dbt, Azure Data Factory, Qlik Sense, and many others.
If you’re selling products on Amazon and running ads, you’re probably familiar with the importance of tracking and optimizing your ad performance. But how can you know if your efforts are paying off? That’s where the Amazon Advertising Sponsored Product Campaign Report comes in.
Whether new to Amazon advertising or looking to sharpen your strategy, understanding these reports can make a huge difference in maximizing your ad spending and growing your business.
Understanding the Campaign Report for Sponsored Products
The Campaign Report for Sponsored Products is a comprehensive tool designed to show how well your ads perform over a specified period. You can use it to evaluate everything from daily performance to monthly trends, allowing you to make informed decisions on improving your campaigns.
This report summarizes the performance of your Sponsored Products ads across different campaigns. It tracks crucial metrics and helps you analyze the effectiveness of your ad strategies. You can use it to:
Track your ad spend
See how many impressions (views) your ads are getting
Measure how often people are clicking on your ads
Evaluate how much revenue your ads are generating
In short, the Campaign Report is your one-stop shop for tracking how well your ads are doing and what changes need to be made.
Types of Data Available in the Report
The Sponsored Product campaign report offers a variety of data types that can be helpful depending on how deep you want to dive into your ad performance. When you drill down into your report, you’ll see a variety of metrics that give a complete view of your campaign’s performance. Key metrics include:
Impressions: Understanding impressions can help you gauge the reach of your ads. If your impressions are low, it might indicate that your ads aren’t being shown to enough people.
Clicks: Clicks are a critical metric. A high click-through rate (CTR) generally means your ad appeals to customers. If clicks are low, your ad needs better call-to-action or more engaging visuals.
Spend: This metric shows how much money you’ve invested in the campaign. Tracking spend is essential for understanding whether you’re getting a good return on your investment.
Sales: Sales data is crucial in determining the effectiveness of your ads. If you get lots of clicks but low sales, your landing pages or product listings may need improvement.
ACoS and RoAS: These two metrics go hand-in-hand. A low ACoS means you’re spending less on ads than the sales generated, while a high ROAS shows that your advertising dollars are being used effectively.
If you want a real-time AI-driven Amazon Advertising data copilot, the Openbridge AI Data Copilot can get you there fast:
How to Use Campaign Reports to Optimize Ad Performance
As you continue using these reports, remember that consistent analysis and optimization are the keys to success. Regularly review your campaigns, make necessary changes, and continue testing new strategies. The more you engage with your campaign data, the better your results will be.
Identify High-Performing Campaigns The first step is to identify which campaigns are doing well. Look for campaigns with high sales and a low ACoS. These campaigns are performing effectively, and consider increasing your budget for them or scaling your efforts.
Spotting Underperforming Campaigns If some campaigns have high ACoS or low sales, it might be time to re-evaluate. Here’s what you can do to improve underperforming campaigns:
Adjust your bids: If your ads aren’t getting enough impressions, you might need to increase your bid.
Change your targeting: Try targeting different keywords or your product targeting to reach a more relevant audience.
Update your ad copy: Sometimes, the wording or images in your ads might not resonate with customers. Test different versions to see what works best.
Adjusting Campaign Settings Once you’ve reviewed your data, it’s time to make adjustments. Consider:
Reallocating your budget: If a particular campaign performs well, consider increasing its budget while cutting back on less effective ones.
Modifying your targeting: Targeting the right audience is key. Use your report data to see which keywords or products generate the best results and focus more on those.
Optimizing your bidding strategy: If certain keywords are performing better than others, increase your bid for those keywords to ensure your ads get shown more often.
Getting Started with Amazon Ads Sponsored Products Data Automation
Ditch the messy, manual reporting for the Amazon Ads Sponsored Product Campaign Report. Automated data feeds guide data-driven decision-making to improve off-Amazon digital marketing campaigns. Leverage insights to refine strategies, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Openbridge will unify and deliver performance data to leading data lakes or cloud warehouses like Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, and Amazon Athena for an analytics-ready single source of truth to fuel informed decisions on brand building strategy, media, and customer demand for Amazon.
With your data unified, start to turbocharge reporting, analytics, and business intelligence tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, SAP, Alteryx, dbt, Azure Data Factory, Qlik Sense, and many others.
For Amazon Sellers and Vendors, the Amazon AdvertisingCampaign Report for Sponsored Brands is a vital tool that offers deep insights into campaign performance. By understanding and utilizing the wealth of information it provides, you can optimize your campaigns, improve ROI, and strategically grow your business.
Understanding the Amazon Advertising Sponsored Brand Campaign Report
The Amazon Advertising Sponsored Brand Campaign Report summarizes your campaign performance over a selected date range. It’s available for Amazon Sellers and Vendor Central retailers running Sponsored brand campaigns.
Key Features of the Campaign Report
By leveraging this report, you can gain valuable insights into your campaigns’ performance and make informed decisions to enhance your advertising efforts. The report offers an aggregated overview of your campaign performance.
Assess Campaign Effectiveness: Identify which campaigns are meeting objectives.
Optimize Budget Allocation: Redirect funds to high-performing campaigns.
Strategize Growth Opportunities: Spot areas for expansion and increased ROI.
Branded Searches: Measures brand awareness by tracking how often customers search for your brand.
New-to-Brand Metrics: Indicates the number of first-time purchasers, highlighting customer acquisition success.
Sales: Total revenue generated from campaigns.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Evaluate the efficiency of your advertising spend.
Analyzing these metrics allows you to tailor strategies to different customer journey stages, from awareness to conversion.
Optimizing Campaigns Based on Report Insights
Here are suggestions for optimizing your Sponsored Brand campaigns based on the insights provided in the amzn_ads_sb_campaigns report:
Enhance Budget Allocation
Action: Monitor campaign_budget_amount and campaign_budget_type to ensure campaigns with high conversion rates (sales/clicks) or click-through rates (view_click_through_rate) have a sufficient budget.
Why: High-performing campaigns may require increased budgets to avoid missed opportunities due to budget constraints.
Improve Targeting Strategy
Action: Use data on branded_searches and branded_searches_clicks to identify the effectiveness of brand-related keywords. Invest in high-converting branded terms. Exclude underperforming or irrelevant keywords (negative targeting).
Why: Focus on targeting terms with the highest relevance and performance to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS).
Analyze Audience Behavior
Action: Leverage new_to_brand_detail_page_views and new_to_brand_units_sold to evaluate the acquisition of new customers. Develop campaigns targeting segments that show high engagement or conversion potential.
Why: Prioritizing new-to-brand customers can grow your customer base and ensure long-term profitability.
Optimize Ad Creative
Action: Review video5_second_view_rate, video_complete_views, and viewability_rate for video campaigns. Test new creatives with higher engagement. Improve video length, content relevance, and call-to-action clarity to increase completion rates.
Why: High-performing visuals and engaging videos enhance brand recall and drive action.
Refine Bidding Strategy
Action: Analyze top_of_search_impression_share to evaluate visibility. Increase bids for high-performing campaigns or keywords with strong conversion rates. Lower bids for underperforming campaigns to improve cost efficiency.
Why: Competitive bids improve placement in high-visibility areas like the top of search results, maximizing clicks and conversions.
Adjust for Seasonality
Action: Use the date column to identify seasonality trends in performance metrics like impressions, clicks, and sales. Increase spend during peak periods for your category. Decrease spend during slower periods while maintaining brand visibility.
Why: Aligning budgets and strategies with demand cycles ensures efficient use of advertising resources.
Monitor Campaign Status
Action: Regularly review campaign_status for campaigns that may be paused or not delivering impressions. Address issues causing campaigns to pause (e.g., budget exhaustion, eligibility issues).
Why: Active management ensures consistent campaign performance and avoids downtime.
Focus on Conversion Optimization
Action: Track metrics like purchases, units_sold, and sales for campaigns and refine: Ad copy or offers to boost conversions. Landing pages to reduce friction and improve purchase likelihood.
Why: Conversion-centric strategies improve overall campaign profitability and ROAS.
Manage Invalid Traffic
Action: Use metrics like gross_impressions and invalid_impressions (from other related datasets) to identify and reduce invalid traffic.
Why: Reducing invalid impressions and clicks protects ad spend and ensures a higher share of genuine customer engagement.
A/B Testing
Action: Test variations in creatives, budgets, or targeting strategies and compare performance metrics (add_to_cart_rate, detail_page_views_clicks, new_to_brand_purchases_rate).
Why: Continuous testing uncovers strategies that drive better performance over time.
Enhancing Data Analytics with Openbridge
Ditch the messy, manual reporting for the Amazon Advertising Sponsored Brand Campaign Report. Automated data feeds guide data-driven decision-making to improve off-Amazon digital marketing campaigns. Leverage attribution insights to refine strategies, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Openbridge unifies and delivers performance data to leading data lakes and cloud warehouses, including:
Amazon Redshift
Google BigQuery
Snowflake
Azure Data Lake
Amazon Athena
Databricks
This creates an analytics-ready single source of truth, fueling informed decisions on brand strategy, media planning, and understanding customer demand on Amazon. Unified data from Openbridge can turbocharge reporting and analytics tools like:
Looker Data Studio
Tableau
Microsoft Power BI
Looker
Amazon QuickSight
SAP
Alteryx
dbt
Azure Data Factory
Qlik Sense
Integrating with these platforms can enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints.
Getting Started with Amazon Advertising Campaign Report Automation
Openbridge specializes in delivering unified, analytics-ready data solutions. By providing code-free, fully managed data pipelines, Openbridge helps businesses harness the full potential of their data without the complexities of manual processes.
This guide will provide an in-depth overview of managing orders in Amazon Vendor Central, covering everything from onboarding to effectively handling bulk shipments. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to refine your processes, this comprehensive post will guide you through the core features of Direct Fulfillment.
Key Differences in Managing Direct Fulfillment Orders
One significant difference between direct fulfillment and traditional fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is the prep work for each ASIN. Unlike FBA, where products are sent to Amazon’s fulfillment centers in bulk, Direct Fulfillment requires individual packing, and vendors need to apply specific labels to each package.
Additionally, Direct Fulfillment requires confirming the order right after the carrier picks it up, ensuring Amazon and the customer are notified immediately about the shipment’s progress.
What is Amazon’s Direct Fulfillment program for?
This program is designed for vendors onboarded into Amazon’s Direct Fulfillment program. Direct Fulfillment is Amazon’s drop-ship model, where vendors pack and ship products directly to customers rather than sending stock to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
If you haven’t been onboarded onto Direct Fulfillment yet, Amazon offers a separate training called What Direct Fulfillment? in the Vendor Central Training Center. This training provides essential insights into the program and its benefits.
Critical Tasks in Order Management
Managing orders in Vendor Central involves a few essential tasks to ensure a smooth fulfillment process. These include:
Changing the Invoice ID: Vendors may need to update the invoice ID to avoid confusion with internal accounting systems. You must note that you can only do this before shipping the item.
Changing the Number of Packages to be Shipped: Sometimes, an order may need to be adjusted based on packaging requirements.
Preparing Shipments: Ensuring all items are packed properly with appropriate labels.
Managing Orders in Bulk: Efficiently managing multiple orders using spreadsheets.
We’ll dive into the specifics of these tasks to help you manage your orders more effectively.
Changing the Invoice ID
To change the invoice ID in Vendor Central, follow these steps:
Select “Update with Spreadsheet”: At the top of the Customer Orders page, click on “Update with Spreadsheet.”
Download and Edit the Spreadsheet**: Select the appropriate warehouse and download the shipments template file. Once downloaded, modify the **Order ID** column in Excel, ensuring that the correct ID is used for your records.
Upload the Updated Spreadsheet**: Save the edited file and upload it back to Vendor Central using the “Browse for updated file” button.
What Happens If You Don’t Ship Within the Required Ship Date?
Timeliness is crucial in Direct Fulfillment. If you fail to ship an order within the required ship date, Amazon grants a grace period of 7 days to confirm the shipment of the item.
Failure to meet this deadline will automatically cancel the order. In this case, a chargeback will be issued, and you cannot invoice the item.
Accessing Your Orders
To access your Direct Fulfillment orders in Vendor Central, go to: Orders > Direct Fulfillment Orders
You can view both unshipped and shipped orders. By default, unshipped orders will be displayed, but you can filter to show shipped items if needed.
Receiving Orders
Orders received through Direct Fulfillment include detailed information on the latest shipping date and time. This information can be viewed under the “Expected Ship Date (ExSD)” and “Ship Method (SM).” It’s essential to note these details to avoid any delays or penalties.
Managing Orders in Bulk
Direct Fulfillment allows for bulk order management through spreadsheet updates, making it easier for vendors to process multiple shipments simultaneously. To manage orders in bulk:
Download the Shipment Template: This template helps update all the relevant information for multiple orders.
Edit Shipment Details: Fill in details like tracking numbers, package contents, etc.
Submit the Spreadsheet: Upload the updated spreadsheet to Vendor Central to apply the changes.
Vendor Central Direct Fulfillment is a powerful tool for vendors who want to take control of the shipping process while leveraging Amazon’s vast reach. Staying proactive and detail-oriented with each order will lead to a smoother fulfillment experience, better customer satisfaction, and a strong partnership with Amazon.
For more information on the Amazon technical documentation for Vendor Central, see start with the SP-API Vendor Direct Fulfillment guide.
Unlock Effortless Data Management With Our Code-Free Amazon Vendor Central Integration
Amazon vendors can spend a lot of time and effort manually processing their data. Say goodbye to the hassle.
Openbridge automation will automatically collect, process, route, and load your Vendor Central data to a private destination.
Openbridge offers a seamless, automated solution that unifies your data into a private, trusted data warehouse or data lake like Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and more — all without a single line of code.
Why Choose Openbridge?
Automate with Ease: Skip the manual report downloads and enjoy automated data feeds directly into your private cloud data warehouse or data lake.
Data-Driven Insights: Leverage high-velocity data for machine learning, business intelligence, and more.
Versatile Compatibility: Works effortlessly with Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and other tools.
Openbridge automation extends beyond inventory to a broad collection of Amazon and non-Amazon data sources;
Automate And Unify Your Vendor Central Data — Free For 30 Days
Start your journey towards data-driven growth and profit with Openbridge. Our code-free, fully automated Selling Partner API integration simplifies your Vendor Central operations.
Ready to harness the power of your Vendor Central data?
This guide will provide an in-depth overview of managing orders in Amazon Vendor Central, covering everything from onboarding to effectively handling bulk shipments. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to refine your processes, this comprehensive post will guide you through the core features of Direct Fulfillment.
Key Differences in Managing Direct Fulfillment Orders
One significant difference between direct fulfillment and traditional fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is the prep work for each ASIN. Unlike FBA, where products are sent to Amazon’s fulfillment centers in bulk, Direct Fulfillment requires individual packing, and vendors need to apply specific labels to each package.
Additionally, Direct Fulfillment requires confirming the order right after the carrier picks it up, ensuring Amazon and the customer are notified immediately about the shipment’s progress.
What is Amazon’s Direct Fulfillment program for?
This program is designed for vendors onboarded into Amazon’s Direct Fulfillment program. Direct Fulfillment is Amazon’s drop-ship model, where vendors pack and ship products directly to customers rather than sending stock to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
If you haven’t been onboarded onto Direct Fulfillment yet, Amazon offers a separate training called What Direct Fulfillment? in the Vendor Central Training Center. This training provides essential insights into the program and its benefits.
Critical Tasks in Order Management
Managing orders in Vendor Central involves a few essential tasks to ensure a smooth fulfillment process. These include:
Changing the Invoice ID: Vendors may need to update the invoice ID to avoid confusion with internal accounting systems. You must note that you can only do this before shipping the item.
Changing the Number of Packages to be Shipped: Sometimes, an order may need to be adjusted based on packaging requirements.
Preparing Shipments: Ensuring all items are packed properly with appropriate labels.
Managing Orders in Bulk: Efficiently managing multiple orders using spreadsheets.
We’ll dive into the specifics of these tasks to help you manage your orders more effectively.
Changing the Invoice ID
To change the invoice ID in Vendor Central, follow these steps:
Select “Update with Spreadsheet”: At the top of the Customer Orders page, click on “Update with Spreadsheet.”
Download and Edit the Spreadsheet**: Select the appropriate warehouse and download the shipments template file. Once downloaded, modify the **Order ID** column in Excel, ensuring that the correct ID is used for your records.
Upload the Updated Spreadsheet**: Save the edited file and upload it back to Vendor Central using the “Browse for updated file” button.
What Happens If You Don’t Ship Within the Required Ship Date?
Timeliness is crucial in Direct Fulfillment. If you fail to ship an order within the required ship date, Amazon grants a grace period of 7 days to confirm the shipment of the item.
Failure to meet this deadline will automatically cancel the order. In this case, a chargeback will be issued, and you cannot invoice the item.
Accessing Your Orders
To access your Direct Fulfillment orders in Vendor Central, go to: Orders > Direct Fulfillment Orders
You can view both unshipped and shipped orders. By default, unshipped orders will be displayed, but you can filter to show shipped items if needed.
Receiving Orders
Orders received through Direct Fulfillment include detailed information on the latest shipping date and time. This information can be viewed under the “Expected Ship Date (ExSD)” and “Ship Method (SM).” It’s essential to note these details to avoid any delays or penalties.
Managing Orders in Bulk
Direct Fulfillment allows for bulk order management through spreadsheet updates, making it easier for vendors to process multiple shipments simultaneously. To manage orders in bulk:
Download the Shipment Template: This template helps update all the relevant information for multiple orders.
Edit Shipment Details: Fill in details like tracking numbers, package contents, etc.
Submit the Spreadsheet: Upload the updated spreadsheet to Vendor Central to apply the changes.
Vendor Central Direct Fulfillment is a powerful tool for vendors who want to take control of the shipping process while leveraging Amazon’s vast reach. Staying proactive and detail-oriented with each order will lead to a smoother fulfillment experience, better customer satisfaction, and a strong partnership with Amazon.
For more information on the Amazon technical documentation for Vendor Central, see start with the SP-API Vendor Direct Fulfillment guide.
Unlock Effortless Data Management With Our Code-Free Amazon Vendor Central Integration
Amazon vendors can spend a lot of time and effort manually processing their data. Say goodbye to the hassle.
Openbridge automation will automatically collect, process, route, and load your Vendor Central data to a private destination.
Openbridge offers a seamless, automated solution that unifies your data into a private, trusted data warehouse or data lake like Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and more — all without a single line of code.
Why Choose Openbridge?
Automate with Ease: Skip the manual report downloads and enjoy automated data feeds directly into your private cloud data warehouse or data lake.
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Versatile Compatibility: Works effortlessly with Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and other tools.
Openbridge automation extends beyond inventory to a broad collection of Amazon and non-Amazon data sources;
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Leverage Near Real-Time Price Updates, BuyBox Insights, and Competitor Analysis to Boost Your Amazon Sales Performance
Amazon provides sellers with continuous data points that deliver valuable insights into everything from pricing changes to inventory levels. These data points enable businesses to make informed decisions quickly, whether adjusting prices, monitoring sales trends, or ensuring products are eligible for the BuyBox.
Rather than manually checking for updates, third-party tools, or waiting for reports, this data can flow directly from Amazon, delivering data in near real-time. This is first-party, authoritative data directly from Amazon systems, which includes product-level price adjustments by competitors, shifts in BuyBox eligibility, and changes in product rankings.
Has A Product Offer Changed On Amazon?
Amazon will send data whenever the top 20 offers for a product change, such as a price adjustment or a change in the BuyBox winner.
What can you do with this data?
Pricing Optimization: By constantly monitoring the landed and BuyBox prices, you can understand changes over time and optimize pricing strategies that balance sell-thru and profitability.
BuyBox Eligibility Tracking: Monitoring the BuyBox eligible offers and BuyBox prices allows you to understand when and why you lose the BuyBox. This data can help inform adjustments to your pricing, shipping, and fulfillment strategy to increase your chances of winning.
Competitor Analysis: By analyzing the lowest prices and the number of offers in various conditions, you can identify when competitors are undercutting your prices. This can trigger strategic adjustments in your offers, such as free shipping or discounts, to regain a competitive edge.
Sales Performance Monitoring: Tracking the sales rank in various product categories helps you understand how price changes affect your product’s visibility and performance. A decline in sales rank could indicate the need to lower your price or offer promotional deals.
What Triggers Cause Changed Offers Updates?
There are a few primary types of changes to offers that will trigger new data to be sent by Amazon:
External: A price change from a non-Amazon seller.
Internal: A price change on Amazon’s retail site.
Featured Offer: A change in the BuyBox winner or BuyBox price.
In addition to those changes, the item’s condition may experience a change (e.g., new, used, collectible), triggering an update from Amazon.
Now that we know what will trigger Amazon to send data, we can dig into the available data.
What types of offer data are available?
Amazon offers various products and competitive offers of data specific to the Amazon marketplace.
Number Of Offers
Condition: The condition of the item (e.g., new, used, collectible).
Fulfillment Channel: Whether the offer is fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) or the seller (MFN).
Offer Count: The total number of offers for the specified condition and fulfillment channel.
Tracking the number of offers for each condition and fulfillment channel helps monitor market competitiveness. For example, many new offers suggest increasing competition, requiring you to revisit your pricing or inventory management.
Lowest Prices
Landed Price: The price of the item plus shipping minus any Amazon Points.
Listing Price: The price of the item before shipping costs.
Shipping: The cost of shipping.
This pricing information provides a view of the cost to the customer. Comparing your landed price against the lowest offer enables you to refine pricing and offer strategies to remain competitive.
Buy Box Prices
Landed Price: The total price (item price + shipping — points) for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Listing Price: The price of the item for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Shipping: The shipping cost for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Understanding the current BuyBox price allows you to adjust your offer to increase the likelihood of winning the BuyBox. If your landed price is too high compared to the BuyBox price, consider adjusting your listing price or offering free shipping to stay competitive.
ListPrice
Amount: The suggested retail price from the manufacturer.
Comparing your price to the list price helps you gauge how aggressively you are pricing your item. Offering discounts below the list price can make your product more attractive to buyers, especially if competitors are sticking close to the MSRP.
Sales Rankings
Product Category Id: The product category (e.g., lawn_and_garden_display_on_website).
Rank: The rank of the product in that category.
Monitoring sales rank in specific categories helps track the performance of your product over time. If you notice a drop in rank, it might indicate that your product is priced too high, or that competitors are offering more attractive deals.
Number Of BuyBox Eligible Offers
Condition: The condition of the item (e.g., new, used, collectible).
Fulfillment Channel: Whether Amazon or the seller fulfills the offer.
Offer Count: The total number of BuyBox-eligible offers.
Knowing how many offers BuyBox is eligible for allows you to better understand the competition. If there are many eligible offers, BuyBox becomes more competitive, requiring more aggressive pricing or fulfillment optimizations.
Understanding Competitive Product Offers
This section provides details about the top 20 competitive offers for the product, including seller ratings, shipping times, and prices.
Seller Id: The identifier for the seller of the offer.
Sub Condition: The sub-condition of the item (e.g., new, mint, very good).
Seller Feedback Rating: Data on the seller’s feedback rating and total feedback count.
Shipping Time: The estimated minimum and maximum shipping times for the offer.
Listing Price: The price of the item.
Shipping: The shipping cost.
Is Fulfilled By Amazon: Indicates whether the offer is fulfilled by Amazon.
Is BuyBox Winner: Indicates whether this offer is currently the BuyBox winner.
Analyze competitive offers to understand how they compare to your own. Offers with better seller feedback ratings or shorter shipping times might win the BuyBox even if their prices are slightly higher. Monitoring whether an offer is fulfilled by Amazon or eligible for Prime can also guide fulfillment decisions to stay competitive.
The Power of Storing Offer Snapshot Data for Long-Term Analysis
Many of these data points, such as pricing changes, offer fluctuations, and BuyBox eligibility, are transitory, meaning they reflect the current state of the market at a particular moment. If you do not store the snapshot, it is gone forever.
Without retaining this information, you cannot look back and see how these metrics evolved over time. Storing this data in your private data warehouse or data lake allows access to the cumulative history of how your offers, prices, and inventory have changed over time. This historical perspective allows for a level of analysis and strategic planning that competitors relying solely on real-time data will not have.
Here are a few opportunities:
Historical Trend Analysis: By capturing data in real-time, you can build daily, weekly, or monthly trends for price fluctuations, inventory levels, and sales rank changes. This enables you to see how your pricing decisions impacted sales or how seasonality affects your product categories.
Performance Benchmarking: Over time, you can use this data to set benchmarks for your performance. By comparing current metrics against previous weeks, months, quarters, or years, you can assess how well your strategies are performing and make data-driven decisions to adjust course if needed.
Competitive Pricing Insights: Analyzing historical pricing data allows you to spot patterns in competitor behavior. For instance, you may notice recurring discounts from competitors at certain times of the year, allowing you to proactively adjust your pricing strategy to stay competitive.
BuyBox Eligibility Monitoring: Monitoring changes in BuyBox ownership and tracking how often you’ve won or lost the BuyBox can reveal opportunities for optimization. By understanding the factors that influenced past BuyBox wins, such as pricing or fulfillment methods, you can refine your approach for future success.
Seasonal and Market Trend Identification: Storing data over long periods allows for detailed analysis of broader market trends. Whether identifying product seasonality or spotting shifts in consumer behavior, long-term data can provide unique insights that are not available from real-time data alone.
Looking back over weeks, months, or even years can offer powerful and actionable insights, turning data into a long-term strategic asset.
Openbridge: A Code-Free, Fully Automated Solution
Teams seeking a rapid, hassle-free implementation with minimal setup time and no coding required will find Openbridge the perfect fit.
Automation Accelerates Insights: Seamlessly integrate data with tools like Tableau, Looker, Power BI, Looker Data Studio, and AWS Quicksight for forecasting, analysis, reporting, and marketing efforts.
Unify Data in Your Cloud Warehouse: Consolidate data in a trusted, private data lake or cloud warehouse such as Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, AWS Redshift, Databricks, AWS Athena, and Google BigQuery.
Openbridge provides a code-free, fully automated solution that swiftly and securely gets your offer data up and running.
Leverage Near Real-Time Price Updates, BuyBox Insights, and Competitor Analysis to Boost Your Amazon Sales Performance
Amazon provides sellers with continuous data points that deliver valuable insights into everything from pricing changes to inventory levels. These data points enable businesses to make informed decisions quickly, whether adjusting prices, monitoring sales trends, or ensuring products are eligible for the BuyBox.
Rather than manually checking for updates, third-party tools, or waiting for reports, this data can flow directly from Amazon, delivering data in near real-time. This is first-party, authoritative data directly from Amazon systems, which includes product-level price adjustments by competitors, shifts in BuyBox eligibility, and changes in product rankings.
Has A Product Offer Changed On Amazon?
Amazon will send data whenever the top 20 offers for a product change, such as a price adjustment or a change in the BuyBox winner.
What can you do with this data?
Pricing Optimization: By constantly monitoring the landed and BuyBox prices, you can understand changes over time and optimize pricing strategies that balance sell-thru and profitability.
BuyBox Eligibility Tracking: Monitoring the BuyBox eligible offers and BuyBox prices allows you to understand when and why you lose the BuyBox. This data can help inform adjustments to your pricing, shipping, and fulfillment strategy to increase your chances of winning.
Competitor Analysis: By analyzing the lowest prices and the number of offers in various conditions, you can identify when competitors are undercutting your prices. This can trigger strategic adjustments in your offers, such as free shipping or discounts, to regain a competitive edge.
Sales Performance Monitoring: Tracking the sales rank in various product categories helps you understand how price changes affect your product’s visibility and performance. A decline in sales rank could indicate the need to lower your price or offer promotional deals.
What Triggers Cause Changed Offers Updates?
There are a few primary types of changes to offers that will trigger new data to be sent by Amazon:
External: A price change from a non-Amazon seller.
Internal: A price change on Amazon’s retail site.
Featured Offer: A change in the BuyBox winner or BuyBox price.
In addition to those changes, the item’s condition may experience a change (e.g., new, used, collectible), triggering an update from Amazon.
Now that we know what will trigger Amazon to send data, we can dig into the available data.
What types of offer data are available?
Amazon offers various products and competitive offers of data specific to the Amazon marketplace.
Number Of Offers
Condition: The condition of the item (e.g., new, used, collectible).
Fulfillment Channel: Whether the offer is fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) or the seller (MFN).
Offer Count: The total number of offers for the specified condition and fulfillment channel.
Tracking the number of offers for each condition and fulfillment channel helps monitor market competitiveness. For example, many new offers suggest increasing competition, requiring you to revisit your pricing or inventory management.
Lowest Prices
Landed Price: The price of the item plus shipping minus any Amazon Points.
Listing Price: The price of the item before shipping costs.
Shipping: The cost of shipping.
This pricing information provides a view of the cost to the customer. Comparing your landed price against the lowest offer enables you to refine pricing and offer strategies to remain competitive.
Buy Box Prices
Landed Price: The total price (item price + shipping — points) for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Listing Price: The price of the item for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Shipping: The shipping cost for the BuyBox-winning offer.
Understanding the current BuyBox price allows you to adjust your offer to increase the likelihood of winning the BuyBox. If your landed price is too high compared to the BuyBox price, consider adjusting your listing price or offering free shipping to stay competitive.
ListPrice
Amount: The suggested retail price from the manufacturer.
Comparing your price to the list price helps you gauge how aggressively you are pricing your item. Offering discounts below the list price can make your product more attractive to buyers, especially if competitors are sticking close to the MSRP.
Sales Rankings
Product Category Id: The product category (e.g., lawn_and_garden_display_on_website).
Rank: The rank of the product in that category.
Monitoring sales rank in specific categories helps track the performance of your product over time. If you notice a drop in rank, it might indicate that your product is priced too high, or that competitors are offering more attractive deals.
Number Of BuyBox Eligible Offers
Condition: The condition of the item (e.g., new, used, collectible).
Fulfillment Channel: Whether Amazon or the seller fulfills the offer.
Offer Count: The total number of BuyBox-eligible offers.
Knowing how many offers BuyBox is eligible for allows you to better understand the competition. If there are many eligible offers, BuyBox becomes more competitive, requiring more aggressive pricing or fulfillment optimizations.
Understanding Competitive Product Offers
This section provides details about the top 20 competitive offers for the product, including seller ratings, shipping times, and prices.
Seller Id: The identifier for the seller of the offer.
Sub Condition: The sub-condition of the item (e.g., new, mint, very good).
Seller Feedback Rating: Data on the seller’s feedback rating and total feedback count.
Shipping Time: The estimated minimum and maximum shipping times for the offer.
Listing Price: The price of the item.
Shipping: The shipping cost.
Is Fulfilled By Amazon: Indicates whether the offer is fulfilled by Amazon.
Is BuyBox Winner: Indicates whether this offer is currently the BuyBox winner.
Analyze competitive offers to understand how they compare to your own. Offers with better seller feedback ratings or shorter shipping times might win the BuyBox even if their prices are slightly higher. Monitoring whether an offer is fulfilled by Amazon or eligible for Prime can also guide fulfillment decisions to stay competitive.
The Power of Storing Offer Snapshot Data for Long-Term Analysis
Many of these data points, such as pricing changes, offer fluctuations, and BuyBox eligibility, are transitory, meaning they reflect the current state of the market at a particular moment. If you do not store the snapshot, it is gone forever.
Without retaining this information, you cannot look back and see how these metrics evolved over time. Storing this data in your private data warehouse or data lake allows access to the cumulative history of how your offers, prices, and inventory have changed over time. This historical perspective allows for a level of analysis and strategic planning that competitors relying solely on real-time data will not have.
Here are a few opportunities:
Historical Trend Analysis: By capturing data in real-time, you can build daily, weekly, or monthly trends for price fluctuations, inventory levels, and sales rank changes. This enables you to see how your pricing decisions impacted sales or how seasonality affects your product categories.
Performance Benchmarking: Over time, you can use this data to set benchmarks for your performance. By comparing current metrics against previous weeks, months, quarters, or years, you can assess how well your strategies are performing and make data-driven decisions to adjust course if needed.
Competitive Pricing Insights: Analyzing historical pricing data allows you to spot patterns in competitor behavior. For instance, you may notice recurring discounts from competitors at certain times of the year, allowing you to proactively adjust your pricing strategy to stay competitive.
BuyBox Eligibility Monitoring: Monitoring changes in BuyBox ownership and tracking how often you’ve won or lost the BuyBox can reveal opportunities for optimization. By understanding the factors that influenced past BuyBox wins, such as pricing or fulfillment methods, you can refine your approach for future success.
Seasonal and Market Trend Identification: Storing data over long periods allows for detailed analysis of broader market trends. Whether identifying product seasonality or spotting shifts in consumer behavior, long-term data can provide unique insights that are not available from real-time data alone.
Looking back over weeks, months, or even years can offer powerful and actionable insights, turning data into a long-term strategic asset.
Openbridge: A Code-Free, Fully Automated Solution
Teams seeking a rapid, hassle-free implementation with minimal setup time and no coding required will find Openbridge the perfect fit.
Automation Accelerates Insights: Seamlessly integrate data with tools like Tableau, Looker, Power BI, Looker Data Studio, and AWS Quicksight for forecasting, analysis, reporting, and marketing efforts.
Unify Data in Your Cloud Warehouse: Consolidate data in a trusted, private data lake or cloud warehouse such as Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, AWS Redshift, Databricks, AWS Athena, and Google BigQuery.
Openbridge provides a code-free, fully automated solution that swiftly and securely gets your offer data up and running.
Go Faster With Amazon Warehousing and Distribution
Unraveling AWD: Key Features and Benefits for Amazon Seller Central
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) significantly advances Seller supply chain management solutions.
Launched in 2022, AWD is Amazon’s answer to the growing complexities and challenges sellers face in managing their inventory across multiple sales channels.
This service is designed to revolutionize how businesses handle their upstream inventory, offering a seamless integration with Amazon’s vast logistics network.
What is Amazon Warehousing and Distribution?
AWD is a low-cost bulk inventory storage and distribution solution engineered explicitly for long-term inventory storage and efficient distribution to Amazon fulfillment centers and other non-Amazon channels.
Its primary purpose is to address critical supply chain challenges that sellers face, particularly in areas of storage capacity, cost management, and inventory replenishment.
Key aspects of AWD’s purpose include:
Solving storage dilemmas: AWD provides a solution to the common problem of insufficient storage capacity, allowing sellers to store large quantities of inventory without the need for their own warehousing facilities.
Cost optimization: By offering competitive storage rates, AWD aims to reduce the overall operational costs associated with inventory management.
Streamlining logistics: The service simplifies moving inventory from upstream facilities to Amazon fulfillment centers, making inventory management more efficient and less time-consuming.
Enhancing inventory visibility: AWD gives sellers a centralized view of their inventory across multiple channels, improving overall supply chain transparency.
Supporting multi-channel selling: The service is designed to support sellers who operate across various sales platforms, not just on Amazon.
Part of the Supply Chain by Amazon
AWD is a crucial component of the broader “Supply Chain by Amazon” initiative. This comprehensive suite of services brings Amazon’s advanced capabilities to the entire seller supply chain, offering an end-to-end solution that gets products from manufacturers to customers worldwide.
Within the Supply Chain of the Amazon ecosystem, AWD works in conjunction with:
Amazon Global Logistics (AGL): Handles international shipping and customs clearance.
Partnered Carrier Program (PCP): Provides domestic transportation solutions.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): Manages order fulfillment for Amazon store sales.
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF): Handles order fulfillment for non-Amazon sales channels.
Buy with Prime: Extends Prime benefits to sellers’ own websites.
This integration allows sellers to leverage Amazon’s logistics expertise across their entire supply chain, from sourcing to last-mile delivery.
Key features and benefits
AWD offers a range of features and benefits designed to address the most pressing needs of e-commerce sellers:
Low-cost bulk storage: AWD provides cost-effective storage solutions, with rates particularly competitive during peak seasons compared to FBA storage fees.
Auto-replenishment: The service automatically replenishes FBA inventory, ensuring products remain in stock and available for fast delivery.
Multi-channel distribution: AWD supports inventory distribution not just to Amazon fulfillment centers, but also to other sales channels, including wholesalers and brick-and-mortar stores.
Improved inventory management: Sellers can view and manage their global inventory through Seller Central, providing a unified inventory management experience.
Increased sales potential: By keeping products in stock and Prime-eligible, AWD can help drive a 15% increase in unit sales on average.
Cost savings: Using AWD can lead to significant cost reductions, including savings on FBA storage fees and elimination of certain FBA-related charges like inbound placement fees.
Streamlined operations: AWD simplifies the entire inventory management process, from receipt to distribution, reducing the complexity of supply chain operations.
Enhanced visibility: The service provides real-time tracking of inventory at every milestone, improving overall supply chain transparency.
Flexibility: AWD allows sellers to store inventory for as long as needed, providing flexibility in managing seasonal fluctuations and long-tail products.
Integration with Amazon’s logistics network: By leveraging Amazon’s advanced logistics capabilities, AWD ensures faster and more reliable movement of products from manufacturers to customers.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution represents a significant step forward in Amazon’s efforts to provide comprehensive supply chain solutions. It addresses key pain points for sellers, offers substantial cost savings, and enhances overall operational efficiency, making it a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimize their e-commerce operations.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution Program Comparison with Traditional 3PL Solutions
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) offers a compelling alternative to traditional third-party logistics (3PL) providers. Let’s explore how AWD compares to traditional 3PL solutions and why it might be a game-changer for many sellers.
Advantages of AWD
Transparent pricing: AWD offers a simple, volume-based pricing structure without hidden fees or long-term contracts.
Consistent rates: Unlike many 3PLs that increase during peak seasons, AWD maintains consistent pricing year-round.
Economies of scale: Leveraging Amazon’s vast network often results in lower overall costs than traditional 3PLs.
Flexible storage: AWD can easily accommodate fluctuations in inventory levels without penalties.
Global reach: Access to Amazon’s worldwide logistics network allows for easier international expansion.
Multi-channel support: AWD facilitates inventory management across various sales channels, a feature not always available with traditional 3PLs.
Advanced inventory management: AWD’s systems provide real-time visibility and predictive analytics.
Auto-replenishment: Automated inventory replenishment to FBA reduces the risk of stockouts.
Integration with seller tools: Seamless connection with Seller Central for streamlined operations.
Fast processing: Inventory typically becomes visible in AWD within 2–4 days of arrival.
Rapid distribution: Quick movement of goods to FBA centers (usually 10–14 days) ensures products are available for fast shipping.
Established network: Amazon’s extensive logistics network often outperforms traditional 3PLs in terms of speed and reliability.
One-stop solution: AWD combines storage, distribution, and fulfillment in a single service.
Reduced complexity: Sellers deal with one provider instead of multiple 3PLs for different services.
Standardized processes: Amazon’s established procedures can simplify inventory management.
Prime eligibility: AWD ensures products remain Prime-eligible, potentially boosting sales.
Consistent delivery: Amazon’s reputation for reliable shipping can improve customer satisfaction.
Multi-channel fulfillment: Ability to offer fast shipping across various sales channels.
Advanced analytics: Access to Amazon’s data analytics can provide valuable insights for inventory optimization.
Demand forecasting: Better prediction of inventory needs based on Amazon’s vast data resources.
Performance metrics: Detailed reporting on storage, distribution, and fulfillment performance.
No long-term commitments: Pay-as-you-go model allows for more flexibility compared to traditional 3PL contracts.
Easy entry and exit: Simpler process to start using the service or discontinue if needed.
Customizable services: Ability to choose which supply chain components to leverage through Amazon.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) Challenges and Considerations
While Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) offers numerous benefits, it’s crucial for sellers to be aware of potential challenges and carefully consider various factors before fully committing to the service.
Understanding these aspects will help sellers make informed decisions and develop strategies to maximize the benefits of AWD while mitigating risks.
A. Potential pitfalls
1. Over-reliance on Amazon’s ecosystem:
- Risk: Becoming too dependent on Amazon’s services may limit flexibility and control over your supply chain.
- Consideration: Maintain relationships with alternative logistics providers and consider a hybrid approach to preserve some independence.
2. Inventory forecasting challenges:
- Risk: Inaccurate forecasting can lead to overstocking or stockouts, especially with AWD’s auto-replenishment feature.
- Consideration: Regularly review and adjust forecasting models, considering factors like seasonality, promotions, and market trends.
3. Cost management complexities:
- Risk: While AWD can offer cost savings, mismanagement of inventory levels or frequent movements between AWD and FBA can increase costs.
- Consideration: Implement robust inventory management strategies and carefully monitor all associated costs.
4. Limited customization options:
- Risk: AWD’s standardized processes may not accommodate all unique product or business requirements.
- Consideration: Evaluate whether your products or business model require specialized handling that AWD might not provide.
5. Potential for commingled inventory:
- Risk: If opting for commingled inventory in FBA, counterfeit products can be mixed with genuine items.
- Consideration: Choose the “sticker-free, label-free” option if concerned about commingling, although this may increase costs.
6. Changes in Amazon’s policies:
- Risk: Amazon may modify AWD terms, pricing, or features, potentially impacting your business model.
- Consideration: Stay informed about Amazon’s policy updates and maintain flexibility in your logistics strategy.
7. Data privacy and competitive concerns:
- Risk: Sharing detailed inventory and sales data with Amazon could potentially be used to Amazon’s advantage.
- Consideration: Understand Amazon’s data usage policies and consider the trade-offs between data sharing and service benefits.
8. Integration challenges:
- Risk: Difficulties in integrating AWD with existing systems or other sales channels could lead to operational inefficiencies.
- Consideration: Invest in proper integration and training to ensure smooth platform operations.
9. Inventory aging and long-term storage:
- Risk: While AWD offers long-term storage, keeping slow-moving inventory can accumulate costs over time.
- Consideration: Regularly review inventory performance and implement strategies to manage slow-moving stock.
10. Geographical limitations:
- Risk: AWD’s effectiveness might vary depending on your target markets and product types.
- Consideration: Evaluate AWD’s network coverage in relation to your key markets and consider supplementary solutions if needed.
B. Balancing inventory across channels
1. Multi-channel inventory allocation:
- Challenge: Determining optimal inventory levels for each sales channel while using a centralized AWD inventory pool.
- Strategy: Implement advanced inventory management software that can dynamically allocate stock based on real-time demand across channels.
2. Maintaining consistent stock levels:
- Challenge: Ensuring adequate stock levels across all channels without overstocking.
- Strategy: Utilize AWD’s auto-replenishment feature in combination with channel-specific reorder points to maintain optimal inventory levels.
3. Handling channel-specific promotions:
- Challenge: Managing inventory for promotions on specific channels without disrupting stock levels for other channels.
- Strategy: Create separate inventory allocations for promotional events and adjust AWD replenishment thresholds accordingly.
4. Seasonal demand variations:
- Challenge: Adapting to different seasonal patterns across various sales channels.
- Strategy: Develop channel-specific forecasting models and use AWD’s flexible storage to manage seasonal inventory efficiently.
5. Product lifecycle management:
- Challenge: Managing inventory for products at different stages of their lifecycle across multiple channels.
- Strategy: Implement a product lifecycle management system integrated with AWD to optimize inventory levels based on each product’s performance across channels.
6. Returns and refurbishment:
- Challenge: Handling returns from multiple channels and reintegrating refurbished items into inventory.
- Strategy: Establish a centralized returns process through AWD and develop clear protocols for restocking refurbished items across channels.
7. Cross-channel fulfillment:
- Challenge: Deciding when to fulfill orders for one channel using inventory allocated for another.
- Strategy: Set up rules in your inventory management system for cross-channel fulfillment, considering factors like shipping speeds and costs.
8. Inventory visibility:
- Challenge: Maintaining real-time visibility of inventory across all channels and AWD.
- Strategy: Invest in an integrated inventory management system that provides a unified view of stock levels across AWD, FBA, and other sales channels.
9. Buffer stock management:
- Challenge: Determining appropriate safety stock levels for each channel while minimizing overall inventory costs.
- Strategy: Use AWD’s storage capacity to maintain centralized buffer stock, adjusting levels based on aggregated demand across all channels.
10. New product introductions:
- Challenge: Allocating inventory for new product launches across multiple channels.
- Strategy: Utilize AWD for initial stock holding and implement a phased rollout strategy across channels based on performance data.
While AWD offers powerful tools for inventory management and distribution, sellers must approach it with a clear understanding of potential challenges. By carefully considering these pitfalls and implementing strategies to balance inventory across channels, sellers can leverage AWD to its full potential.
The key lies in maintaining flexibility, continuously monitoring performance, and being prepared to adjust strategies as needed. With the right approach, AWD can be valuable in creating a robust, multi-channel e-commerce operation.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution Fees, Costs and Pricing Structure
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) offers a transparent and competitive pricing structure to provide cost-effective solutions for sellers’ storage and distribution needs. Understanding this pricing structure is crucial for sellers to maximize their cost savings and optimize inventory management strategies.
AWD storage costs are based on the physical volume of inventory and are calculated per cubic foot per month. The pricing is divided into two main periods:
1. Non-holiday period (January through September):
- Base rate: $0.48 per cubic foot per month
- Integrated rate (using AGL or PCP): $0.36 per cubic foot per month (25% discount)
2. Holiday period (October through December):
- Base rate: $0.48 per cubic foot per month (remains the same as non-holiday)
- Integrated rate (using AGL or PCP): $0.36 per cubic foot per month (25% discount)
Key points about AWD storage costs:
- Consistent pricing throughout the year, including during peak holiday seasons
- Significant savings compared to FBA storage, especially during Q4
- No long-term contracts or complex pricing schemes
- Pay-as-you-go model for flexibility
B. Processing fees
AWD processing fees cover the costs associated with receiving, handling, and preparing inventory for storage or distribution. The fee structure is as follows:
- Base rate: $2.50 per box
- Integrated rate (using AGL or PCP): $2.13 per box (15% discount)
These fees are charged when:
- Inventory is initially received at AWD facilities
- Inventory is prepared for shipment to FBA or other channels
C. Transportation fees
AWD charges transportation fees for moving inventory from AWD facilities to other destinations. The fee structure is:
1. Transportation to FBA:
- Base rate: $1.00 per cubic foot
- Integrated rate (using AGL or PCP): $0.85 per cubic foot (15% discount)
2. Transportation to other distribution channels:
- Flat rate: $1.65 per cubic foot (no discount for integrated services)
These fees cover the costs of:
- Preparing inventory for shipment
- Transportation to the destination
- Any necessary documentation and tracking
D. Comparison with FBA storage costs
AWD offers significant cost savings compared to FBA storage, especially during peak seasons:
1. Non-holiday period (January through September):
- AWD: $0.48 per cubic foot per month
- FBA (standard-size): $0.78 per cubic foot per month (effective April 1, 2024)
- Savings with AWD: 38%
2. Holiday period (October through December):
- AWD: $0.48 per cubic foot per month
- FBA (standard-size): $2.40 per cubic foot per month
- Savings with AWD: 80%
Additional cost benefits of AWD:
- No FBA inbound placement service fees
- Waiver of FBA storage-utilization surcharges when using AWD auto-replenishment
- Waiver of low-inventory-level costs and storage-overage costs with AWD auto-replenishment
E. Integrated rates with AGL or PCP
Amazon offers significant discounts for sellers who use Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) or the Partnered Carrier Program (PCP) in conjunction with AWD:
1. Storage costs: 25% discount
- Standard rate: $0.48 per cubic foot per month
- Integrated rate: $0.36 per cubic foot per month
2. Processing fees: 15% discount
- Standard rate: $2.50 per box
- Integrated rate: $2.13 per box
3. Transportation to FBA: 15% discount
- Standard rate: $1.00 per cubic foot
- Integrated rate: $0.85 per cubic foot
Key considerations for AWD pricing:
1. Volume-based savings: The more you store and ship through AWD, the more you can save.
2. Seasonal strategy: AWD’s consistent pricing allows for more predictable costs during peak seasons.
3. Integration benefits: Using AGL or PCP can lead to substantial savings across storage, processing, and transportation.
4. Long-term storage efficiency: AWD is particularly cost-effective for items that require longer storage periods.
5. Multi-channel optimization: The pricing structure supports efficient inventory management across multiple sales channels.
AWD’s pricing structure offers a transparent, flexible, and cost-effective inventory storage and distribution solution. By leveraging the integrated rates with AGL or PCP, sellers can achieve significant cost savings while streamlining their entire supply chain process.
The substantial savings compared to FBA storage, especially during peak seasons, make AWD an attractive option for sellers looking to optimize their inventory management and reduce operational costs.
