Choosing the right cross-border warehousing service can not only improve the customer’s shopping experience, but also save logistics costs for sellers. Amazon sellers can choose to send goods to FBA warehouses or third-party overseas warehouses. Therefore, sellers can only make reasonable choices if they understand the characteristics of cross-border warehousing and the differences between warehouses.
In order to sell goods across the ocean, except for sellers who ship their own goods, most other sellers must ensure that the goods they sell have a place to stay after entering other countries. At present, whether it is FBA warehouses or third-party overseas warehouses, as long as the corresponding warehousing and logistics fees are paid, they can help sellers realize a series of logistics services such as warehousing, picking, distribution, customer service, return and exchange processing, thereby shortening delivery time and improving customer satisfaction.
At the same time, there are many differences between FBA warehouses and third-party overseas warehouses.
From the perspective of product characteristics, FBA warehouses tend to be small, high-value, and high-quality goods, while third-party overseas warehouses have a wider range of choices. For larger and heavier goods, third-party overseas warehouses are a better choice. The requirements of FBA warehouses for goods before entering the warehouse are also higher than those of third-party overseas warehouses. The main difference is that FBA warehouses have more stringent requirements for outer box labels and product labels, while some third-party overseas warehouses even provide sorting and assembly services.
From the perspective of whether the warehouse is divided into warehouses, the advantages of third-party overseas warehouses are more obvious. Amazon FBA warehouses are divided into warehouses by default, so it is relatively difficult for sellers to manage the warehouse direction of goods. Third-party overseas warehouses generally manage the goods of the same seller in one warehouse. Based on this difference, some sellers can adopt a warehousing model that combines FBA warehouses with third-party overseas warehouses, and use third-party overseas warehouses as transit warehouses. During the peak season, goods can be transferred from third-party overseas warehouses to FBA warehouses, thereby improving efficiency and speeding up the delivery of goods.
From the perspective of cost and benefit, choosing FBA warehouses can bring more promotion support to products, thereby improving the ranking of products and the chance of obtaining shopping carts. Sellers who choose third-party overseas warehouses need to do their own promotion inside and outside the site to increase store exposure, which invisibly increases the seller’s expenses. In addition, negative store reviews caused by FBA warehousing and logistics can be deleted, while third-party overseas warehouses cannot delete negative reviews left by customers due to logistics issues. Customers’ negative reviews will ultimately directly affect the ranking of the seller’s products.
To sum up, FBA warehouses can help sellers operate stores efficiently and thus bring in profits. This is also one of the best value-added services currently provided by Amazon to sellers. On the contrary, it is precisely because third-party overseas warehouses exist independently of the Amazon platform that they cannot enjoy the many benefits provided by the platform. It also means that third-party overseas warehouses have more relaxed entry and exit requirements, and sometimes are more competitive in price than the FBA warehousing model. Therefore, when choosing a cross-border warehousing model, novice sellers should fully combine the attributes and positioning of their own products, and then make a choice based on the above pros and cons analysis.