Currently, on the Amazon platform, sellers can choose between two delivery methods: FBA delivery and seller self-delivery. Seller self-delivery includes delivery from China to a third-party overseas warehouse and then from the overseas warehouse to the buyer, and delivery from China directly to the buyer.
The first is delivery from FBA. Sellers can put the goods in the FBA warehouse in advance. When a buyer places an order, the goods will be shipped from the FBA warehouse. A series of logistics services such as warehousing, picking, distribution, customer service, and return and exchange processing will be provided by Amazon. FBA is one of the value-added services of the Amazon platform. It enjoys the traffic advantage from the platform and is also deeply trusted by customers. The advantages of FBA include fast logistics speed, professional FBA customer service, and the buyer’s negative reviews due to logistics reasons can be deleted. The disadvantage of FBA is that the overall cost is high, and the buyer’s return and exchange are determined by FBA, resulting in a high return rate, increasing the cost and risk of overstocking, and the returned goods can only be returned to the FBA warehouse, and the loss is borne by the seller.
The second is the self-delivery method of shipping from a third-party overseas warehouse. Sellers also need to prepare goods in advance and enter third-party overseas warehouses. Although the overall logistics cost of shipping from a third-party overseas warehouse is not necessarily lower than FBA, the storage cost is usually lower than FBA, so it is beneficial for sellers to develop local markets. Its disadvantage is that it has high requirements for inventory management and supply chain management, which can easily cause inventory pressure or backlog risks. At the same time, there is no traffic support from the Amazon platform, and it is even more difficult to gain the favor of Prime members.
The last is the self-delivery method where sellers ship directly from domestic to buyers. Sellers ship every order from abroad, which can fully reduce the cost of inventory pressure and minimize storage fees. At the same time, the operation is controllable and flexible. The disadvantage of this method is that it cannot obtain traffic support from the Amazon platform, and it is more likely to cause customers to give bad reviews due to logistics problems.