What if some simple tweaks to your Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) account could immediately increase your potential customer base by millions?
Setting up Remote Fulfillment with FBA accomplishes just that. For most Amazon sellers, there’s little reason not to take advantage of it. Keep reading to learn how it works!
Remote fulfillment is a service Amazon offers to FBA sellers that allows you to more easily sell to Mexican and Canadian customers. You can list your products on amazon.com.mx and amazon.ca and offer Prime shipping to customers in those countries without having to deal with the complications that frequently come with selling abroad.
Because Amazon handles fulfillment through its warehouses, you don’t have to hassle with things like country taxes and import duties. And you don’t even have to ship your products directly to either country. Amazon will fulfill orders to Canada and Mexico from the same US warehouses you already use.
Remote Fulfillment with FBA can help you tap into a whole new market for your products. But as with any Amazon service for sellers, you need to understand the details of how it works before you sign up. Here are a few of the main facts to be aware of.
One of the prime (haha) benefits of participating in Amazon FBA, in general, is that your customers get fast, free shipping. Customers love it and sellers get more orders because of it. FBA works a little differently in Mexico and Canada though. Customers still get the benefit of free shipping, but they don’t get the one or two-day shipping options that are common for Prime customers in the US.
Instead, customers in Mexico will generally get their items within five to nine days; those in Canada can expect shipping times of seven to 12 days.
Selling internationally typically introduces some new headaches for businesses. One common cause of those headaches is having to figure out import fees. With Remote Fulfillment via FBA, import fees are covered by the customer. And the system is set up to make the process of calculating and adding import fees automatic so sellers don’t have to worry about figuring out the details. It’s taken care of for you.
Remote Fulfillment with FBA isn’t your only option for selling outside of the United States. The FBA Export program allows sellers to send products to customers around the world. However, the two programs are different. With FBA Export, your products will be available to customers worldwide for purchase on Amazon.com. So, your products won’t show up for a search on amazon.de, but if a consumer in Germany finds your product on amazon.com and wants to order it, FBA Export makes that possible.
Note that you do need to have FBA Export enabled before you can enroll in remote fulfillment, so it’s worth signing up for. Both services may well be worth using for your business, but make sure you understand the details of each so you don’t get them confused.
Listing your products on a new marketplace could sound like a lot of work. If you have hundreds of listings you want to extend to Canada and Mexico through the remote fulfillment program, making duplicates of them all could take hours. That’s why Amazon offers a simpler option with automatic listing creation.
If you choose automatic listing creation in your setting preferences, you can skip the work of manually creating new listings for each marketplace. Instead, Amazon will automatically create them for you, including adjusting for differences in fulfillment fees, referral fees, and currency exchange rates. While listings are automatically translated by Amazon, for true language localization, you'll want to turn to a professional translation service to reach more customers and accurately target your audiences.
The fee structure for remote fulfillment will be familiar to most Amazon sellers. What you pay is based on your package weight and what size tier it falls into.
However, as of June 30, 2022, Amazon will begin using either the unit weight or dimensional weight (whichever one is greater) to calculate the shipping weight of all large standard-size and oversize units.
This is also the effective date for the new 2022 Remote Fulfillment with FBA fee changes. Unsurprisingly, fulfillment fees have increased across the board in both countries. For example, a small standard shipment to Canada (6 oz or less) that would have previously cost you $7.22 CAD is now $7.58 CAD.
If you're already using the program, you’ll want to take a close look at these fee changes and make any necessary price adjustments to your products.
Before you can sign up for remote fulfillment via FBA, check that you’re registered for FBA in the US, Canada, and Mexico, that you have a North America Unified Account, and that you have FBA Export enabled.
If all that’s taken care of, head to the Remote Fulfillment page.
Follow the instructions provided to enroll and select your preferences as you go. Once you finish the process, Amazon will automatically check all your products to determine which are eligible. If you’ve enabled automatic listing creation, Amazon will also create listings on each of the new marketplaces for you as well.
It’s as simple as that. Once you’re done, you may wonder why it took you so long to get started. Remote fulfillment will increase the fees you spend for products sold in Canada and Mexico in comparison with those sold in the US. But with the increase in sales the program’s likely to bring in, for many sellers the extra fees will pay off.
Will you give it a try or are you already enrolled? Let us know!
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