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Has anyone pulled out of FBA and gone back to FBM recently?
Hi, we seem to be finding ourselves in a downward spiral with Amazon, over the years I am noticing more and more of the payment pie is going Amazons way. Also in comparison to my other platforms, we are finding Amazon probably takes up 95% of my time with how unnecessarily convoluted it is.
We are considering pulling out of FBA, opting out of the programs we are in and going it alone. My question is, has anyone pulled out of FBA this year and if so, have you been wiped out or are sales still ongoing?
We sell low value products, when we were FBM if someone purchased 2 or 3 packs, this was a much bigger profit margin for us however, in FBA even though we sell more, when buyers buy multiples, we are paying full fees on each item sold. (That's just one angle I can see where we are losing out) We could set up FBA Multiple options such as 2 pack, three pack etc but the work involved getting that rolling is going to be huge and on products that only sell for £4-6 I just don't know if its worth it?
Something I am conscious of is that most people I know have prime and only buy prime items on Amazon?
Any thoughts and advice will be warmly received.
TIA :)
14 replies
Seller_76AUwmqvSyRIM
I have reduced my oversize FBA lines and retained the respective FBM offers, the main reasons are excessively high fulfilment costs and storage fees. Sales maybe a bit less but not a problem as I am now in control of my costs.
Seller_tHDZMh56pq7gX
I have done a bit of both since I started. I did have one fast selling item under FBA, but like you, was frustrated by not getting any of the efficiencies when customers ordered multiples.
I recently had an FBM £12 item that a customer ordered 10 of, so made considerably more margin on this order than if it had it been in Amzs warehouse. The way I see it, if I am going to do some sales FBM and pick / Pack / ship myself, I may as well do them all.
The major downside for me (only me - no employees) is that when I go on holiday next Friday, I will have zero sales for two weeks.
On the few items I have sent to the AMZs warehouse, I have had things go missing. I have also had items stay in the warehouse too long (my mistake on not doing enough research on that particular product), and then had to pay excess storage, and ultimately had to pay for them to be sent back. I have also had circumstances whereby I have been kicked off a listing (after being approved to sell), fortunately, these were items not in the warehouse, so it wasn't a headache to get my stock back and relist elsewhere.
All in all, for me personally, FBA is higher risk that is not offset by the higher sales. But I can see if you sell massive volumes FBA has it's distinct advantages of not scaling up your own operations. for context, I do around 5-10 orders a day across AMZ and eBay, so for me, this is more than manageable.
Seller_WNgLvQF3YKSZQ
I have deleted all our FBA listings, in our case FBM working better, as most orders is for multiple quantities,
100 FBA orders = 12.8 FBM orders
we had product where we make £1.3 profit per sale, if FBA order was for qty 10 so made £13, but FBM for same qty then profit was £49
We have pay out every two weeks and dont see any difference in amount.
Seller_40ozsHlGqPuEL
We did as the Amazon staff kept putting the wrong sizes on small items and sent them at the wrong postage.
We gave up contacting them, as Amazon FBA support was almost impossible to contact and we just ended up losing money in the end.
In all fairness, the luxury of no negatives and someone else packing you products is wonderful. However the FBA seems intent (or by accident) keen on just overcharging the merchant.
Seller_d8YGbIjNqwFxn
Over the last 15 months I have gone from 95% FBA sales to 95% FBM sales.
Profit and sales are still good and I am probably selling more than I was when I was mostly FBA.
I feel more in control, returns are lower and I have more stock to sell on other marketplaces.
The only downside is that it takes a lot longer to despatch orders each day than it would to pack up the same number of items for FBA.
Seller_fj3M54GkuGQyT
We have looked at switching from FBA to FBM a few times in the past and are strongly considering it again now, again, mainly due to the cost Amazon charges us.
We too sell low value items ranging from £3 to our most expensive being £22 and the fees Amazon charge can make a huge impact in our cash flow. We recently had an £8.99 item go out of stock in FBA so it switched over the FBM. During the time it was FBM we had one order that was for 20 units. Had it been an FBA order, Amazon would have taken £64 just in fulfilment fees. We sent it via next day courier and paid just £8, so made an extra £56 on that one order.
The only thing that's stopping me, or at least making me thing twice, is we do generally notice that sales volumes are a lot lower when an item switches over to FBM, for example, a product might sell 10 units a day FBA but 1 unit a day FBM. We do have the advantage of being registered for SFP but we'd need to be much better organised to switch 100% of our products over the SFP haha.
Seller_FJujmZBurENAY
Try Huboo in Bristol, Much better and cheaper than ScAmazon.
Seller_SnNztJIII3ZP5
The FMA fees just kept spilling and I had very little control of returns so have gone back to FMA to 100 percent. Im not looking to be millionaire and can do with the reduced stress.
Seller_0AG9i8qKfX9Eu
i so less than ever fba.. returns and are are complete mess with amazon.. When we ship our own products out we hardly get returns.
Then with FBA i constantly get return emails with no reason on there for the return, the return doesn't get seen again in most cases and keeping up with all this for a small company is impossible.
At the moment after selling on Amazon since 2010 i am really seeing its not what it was and really not something i would be getting into if i was starting now..
The main thing is the good sellers that got amazon where they are today are just treated like muck.
Seller_kueWvZmgSqTJF
Have been selling as FBM all my time in the last 20 years and last summer decided to take the leap and transferred 80% of my inventory to FBA .. only to later find sales were much lower than FBM .. I realised I was actually getting more orders comparitively from other marketplaces once I re-tweaked all my listings ... as most of my stock was sitting in Amazon's warehouse, I had to buy more stock from my suppliers to fulfil orders from the other marketplaces. Then noticed a further decline in sales on Amazon and product data on their catalog was being changed for some reason (we sell 3rd party branded products). As we were selling brands not owned by us, we could not amend or even suggest amending product data except for the brand owners .. and the now the further implementation of "DD + 7". This meant more of my money (and stock) blocked within the Amazon eco system. Only to now constantly being "invited" to apply for a business loan by Amazon lending to "improve" my business. Have pulled out all my FBA stock and have now only decided to do FBM and in limited quantites for this Christmas season. Will eventually pull out from Amazon all together in January.
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