Many people always feel that they cannot use overseas warehouses. In fact, overseas warehouses are an indispensable part of our Amazon business. Whether you are a big seller or a small seller, you cannot do without overseas warehouses. For Amazon sellers, having a reliable overseas warehouse is very important. Next, let’s analyze why overseas warehouses are so important.
1. What is an overseas warehouse and how to use it rationally
The so-called overseas warehouse refers to the warehousing facilities established overseas. It is the overseas merchants who provide our domestic sellers with reasonable services. A place to store, return and exchange goods.
As for how to rationally use overseas warehouses, there are different answers for large, medium and small sellers. Therefore, we will analyze different seller types to see how different sellers should use overseas warehouses.
1. Small-scale sellers
For small sellers, the function of overseas warehouses should focus more on returns and exchanges. We also mentioned before that Amazon’s return and exchange rate has always been high. As a small seller, you should reasonably use overseas warehouses for secondary processing of returns and exchanges. When a return or exchange occurs and resale is not possible, Amazon will generally let you choose to discard or send it to a certain address. Due to Amazon’s strict rules, many products will be directly listed as products that cannot be resold by Amazon after being returned or exchanged by customers.
At this time, if there is no reasonable overseas warehouse, these goods can only be disposed of by Amazon for us, and additional charges will be required. With overseas warehouses, we can send these goods to our cooperative overseas warehouses and let them help us repackage and label the goods that can be resold. And resend it back to the Amazon warehouse, so that we can recover our losses to the greatest extent.
2. Medium-sized sellers
For medium-sized sellers, returns and exchanges are a basic need and a must-have condition. In addition, medium-sized sellers have more urgent needs for overseas warehouses. ① Medium sellers may operate more than one account. In order to save shipping costs, they may send the goods to overseas warehouses for storage at one time. Otherwise, sending FBA all together will cause correlation. ② Not all accounts will perform the same, so it is necessary to place them in overseas warehouses for allocation. Therefore, medium-sized sellers need a stable overseas warehouse to help with resource allocation and planning.
3. Large-scale sellers
For large-scale sellers, they may have chosen to build their own overseas warehouses because they have greater demand for overseas warehouses. In addition to the same needs as small and medium-sized sellers, they may also need to identify, repair and upgrade damaged products. Overseas warehouses are equivalent to a support center for this seller abroad.
It can be seen from this that no matter how large a seller is, there is actually a demand for overseas warehouses. Different sellers require different levels of products, so when we layout Amazon seller stores, it is best to take overseas warehouses into consideration.
For example, an overseas warehouse that the author has used not only has basic overseas warehouse functions, but also can help sellers evaluate and recycle products. If there are some mid- to high-priced products that need to be evaluated, you can choose to have overseas warehouses collect the evaluated products, or even conduct secondary sales. Doing this can also save a lot of product costs for evaluation.
2. How to choose between overseas warehouses and FBA
At this point, another question arises: How to choose between overseas warehouses and FBA?
The role of overseas warehouses is to help us reduce part of the cost, and FBA actually helps us increase exposure and sales, and is an indispensable content. In fact, overseas warehouses are a supplement to FBA. You can use overseas warehouses to do things that FBA cannot do, such as returns, exchanges, repackaging, and shipping operations for multiple accounts.
So, overseas warehouses and FBA actually complement each other. FBA promotes sales, and overseas warehouses help us improve our after-sales level. Any seller who wants to do well and become big should possess both of these. Otherwise, you will end up walking on one leg in warehousing.