For any business looking to sell their products through Amazon, there are obvious rewards, but more than a few drawbacks.
As the biggest online retail market in the world, Amazon has a lot to offer the modern, dynamic business. They can put your products in front of a huge, global customer-base. With a catalogue of over 350 million items, the site is often the first place that consumers think to look. You no doubt want to be part of that shop window. Plus, invitation to the Amazon Vendor Central platform allows you to sell to customers indirectly and in bulk – in principle taking away a lot of the work and complexity involved in direct selling.
The Downside?
However … and it’s a big “however … Vendor Central is not without its own hidden stresses. Vendors have less control over pricing and typically enjoy lower margins. But surely, you may think, with such huge levels of customers traffic, the scale of sales will compensate?
That’s where Amazon’s infamous non-compliance deductions can really hurt your bottom line. The platform imposes a heavy financial penalty for any beach of their stringent regulations. These “chargebacks,” – which can be charged for any number of issues in fulfilment, shipping or packaging – typically consume between 4% – 18% of your revenue, easily wiping out any profit. In real terms, for a vendor making £10 million in sales, Vendor Central penalties could deduct up to £1,.8 million from your earnings.
Ensuring that your business is compliant with every element of Vendor Central regulations is a huge task in itself. Even worse, deductions are triggered by an automated tool that regularly makes mistakes. This is a lose-lose situation, vendors spend real time and resources that could be better used elsewhere, whilst losing money to an error-prone machine-driven process.
We have a simple solution
Thankfully, there is a way to minimise both losses and time spent. We have designed Vendor Connect as an integrated SaaS solution that will automate your compliance, increase your revenue, and free up time to grow your business.
To talk briefly about the technical stuff – Vendor Connect includes full EDI integration with additional intelligent features including EAN/UPC mapping, acceptance and rejection rules based on your specific criteria, LPR compliance and much more. In short, it clears the minefield of the Vendor Central platform, allowing you to sell in bulk to Amazon, without the need to constantly monitor the relationship or worry about manual errors.
Even better, the tool has been designed by industry experts with real, first-hand experience of navigating Amazon’s regulations and deductions. That means it is specifically tailored to help you enjoy all the rewards of selling via the world’s biggest online retailer … whilst eliminating those drawbacks.
We’d be delighted to talk more about how Vendor Central can work for you.
