Many companies utilize a variety of Amazon’s services, whether it be via Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, or even Amazon Shipping as the carrier. With so many services, what do they all actually do and how can ShipHawk work with them?
As a merchant utilizing ShipHawk’s Fulfillment Management Solutions – be it WMS, advanced shipping, freight and parcel audit, or our handheld dimensioner – you can interact with Amazon in a variety of ways, including:
You can use Amazon as a marketplace to sell products, either as Amazon Prime sellers or a non-Prime sellers. The two options here are to fulfill orders for your products yourself, from your own warehouses, or to have Amazon manage the fulfillment.
Whether you’re a Prime seller or a non-Prime seller, selling on Amazon expands your potential market significantly. According to Amazon, almost 60% of sales in Amazon’s store are from independent sellers, and almost all of those were from small and medium-sized businesses. On top of that, independent sellers sold more than 4.1 billion products – averaging 7,800 products sold every minute.
ShipHawk customers who are Prime sellers managing their own fulfillment must fulfill Prime orders using SFP. One of the requirements for using SFP is to use Amazon Buy Shipping for booking and labeling. The easy way to think about Buy Shipping is as a way to buy shipping from Amazon where the carriers are major carriers with Amazon-negotiated rates.
ShipHawk customers who are Prime sellers managing their own fulfillment must fulfill Prime orders using SFP. One of the requirements for using SFP is to use Amazon Buy Shipping for booking and labeling. The easy way to think about Buy Shipping is as a way to buy shipping from Amazon where the carriers are major carriers with Amazon-negotiated rates.
ShipHawk automatically handles the processing of SFP for customers by restricting options to Amazon Buy Shipping only. By doing this, no additional rules need to be created in ShipHawk. When a Prime order comes into your ERP, the order must be flagged as a Prime order so that ShipHawk automatically restricts the services to Amazon Buy Shipping.
Learn more about the benefits of Seller Fulfilled Prime here→
Businesses using FBM are non-Prime sellers who are listing products on Amazon, and they manage the storage, shipping, and customer support. You can use ShipHawk to book, pick, pack, label and ship your orders.
With FBA, Amazon fulfills orders that are purchased on Amazon so neither your warehouse nor ShipHawk are involved in the picking, packing, nor shipping of orders.
ShipHawk supports customers who sell products to Amazon in two different ways – Amazon Transportation Services (ATS) and Amazon Direct Fulfillment (DF). When selling to Amazon, Amazon owns the products and can rebrand them as Amazon Basics. Merchants fulfilling orders in either option would use ShipHawk to book with Amazon Transportation.
Amazon Transportation Services – when selling to Amazon where the destination is the Amazon warehouse, you must use ATS to ship your products to them. ShipHawk is integrated with Amazon Transportation, yet Amazon Transportation is not in itself a carrier. Instead, ATS is the process Amazon uses to determine which carrier and shipping method to use when shipping to an Amazon Fulfillment Center.
Amazon Direct Fulfillment – here, you are fulfilling orders directly to the consumer from your own warehouse or 3PL if Amazon runs out of stock of your products in their own warehouse. The benefit here is that there is no delay for customers in receiving their orders, which would be the case if you had to first ship your products to an Amazon warehouse where they would then ship to the customer. When using Amazon Direct Fulfillment, you must use ATS to ship your products direct to consumers.
Businesses selling on multiple eCommerce channels also have the option to use Amazon as a third-party logistics (3PL) provider with Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF). With MCF, Amazon stores your products in Amazon warehouses and fulfills the orders when placed. Benefits include inventory flexibility, low shipping costs, fast shipping, and increased brand visibility and exposure by listing items on multiple marketplaces. ShipHawk customers can use ShipHawk to book the order with Fulfillment by Amazon.
Find out more about Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment→
You can now use Amazon Shipping, Amazon’s carrier service, to deliver orders to your customers. Amazon Shipping works like other carriers, for example FedEx or UPS, and can deliver orders even when not placed on Amazon. ShipHawk supports Amazon Shipping and hundreds of other carrier connectors.