With FBA, Amazon stores and ships your products and you pay its storage and handling fees. With FBM, you or your logistics provider ship from your own stock. Most brands end up combining both.
Published · Vialog Fulfillment
Fast-moving, small products with enough margin to absorb the fees, where the Prime badge sways the purchase.
Long catalogue with slow-moving SKUs (Amazon storage fees explode), bulky products, new products on trial, stock shared with your website and other marketplaces, and when you want control over packaging. With a provider that meets Amazon’s lead times, FBM gives access to Seller Fulfilled Prime.
Best sellers in FBA, the rest FBM from the same stock as your website; and your provider preparing FBA shipments from that same stock.
FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) means Amazon stores your stock in its warehouses, picks and ships the orders and handles returns. FBM (fulfilment by merchant) means you or your logistics provider ship them from your own stock. Either way you sell on the same marketplace; only who handles the logistics changes.
It depends on the product: FBA usually pays off with small, fast-moving SKUs, and FBM with bulky or slow-moving products, where Amazon’s storage fees weigh more. Work out the cost per order of each option with your real SKUs, including several months of storage, before deciding.
Your FBA offer for that SKU becomes unavailable until the replenishment is received at Amazon’s warehouses, which can take days. That is why many brands also keep an FBM offer for the same SKU from their logistics provider, so they keep selling in the meantime from the stock shared with their website.
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