Today, ahead of schedule, Amazon has rolled out the second phase of its strategy for Australia – launching FBA for Australian 3rd Party Sellers on Amazon.com.au.
To qualify for Free Shipping, customers simply need to have a basket size over $49. While that might be tricky today, it’ll get easier for customers once 3rd Party Sellers get their products into Amazon’s warehouse (Melbourne is the only one operational at the moment).
Having said that, I’m not seeing an FBA Shipping option in my Amazon Australia Seller Central account so I imagine it’s being rolled out slowly.
Anyway, there’s more information on this article here.
The carrot being dangled to encourage 3rd Party Sellers to get on board is the Free Storage of your inventory until the 31st of August.
Amazon will charge 3rd Party sellers from $1.76 to fulfil an order that fits in a small envelope and up to $25.48 for a bulky order weighing up to 30 kilograms.
It’ll charge $7.76 to pack and send an order weighing up to three kilograms. Australia Post charges $8.50 to send a parcel that size anywhere in Australia, so Amazon’s already looking a lot more competitive. If you’re doing volume, that’s a decent saving of about 9.5%, although, when you add the $1.76 pick and pack fee, it costs a little more.
Storage will be charged at $19.40 per cubic metre for the most of the year, and $26.50 per square metre in the busy Christmas shopping months from October to December.
As a 3rd Party Seller, we do pay a monthly fee of $49.95 to sell our products on Amazon, which takes a cut of sales between 6% and 15%, depending on the product category.
As more warehouses are created across Australia, Amazon’s FBA network will become much more efficient!
The 3rd act of Amazon’s play must be the aggressive roll-out of Amazon Prime to drive Australian Consumers to the site. That can’t be far away now…
While Amazon’s roll-out has been criticised as being a little underwhelming, a recent analysis of Amazon’s Australian website found the number of products being sold hit half a million in January, after doubling from December 14 to January 4.
Impressive.
