5 Things to Know About Remote Fulfillment with FBA

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!

What is Remote Fulfillment with Amazon FBA?

Remote fulfillment is a service Amazon offers to FBA sellers that allows you to easily sell items to customers in Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. You can list your products on amazon. ca, amazon.com.br, and amazon.com.mx. The program allows you to offer Prime shipping to customers in those countries without many of the complications that frequently come with selling abroad. 2024 update: Eligible products are now automatically enrolled in the program for eligible FBA sellers.

Products must be enabled for FBA in the US and have valid offers in Brazil, Canada, or Mexico to be eligible for Remote Fulfillment with FBA. Additionally, eligible products must meet trade compliance and regulations for the destination country. Restricted, prohibited, and dangerous goods products are not eligible. You can manually enroll or unenroll in the stores that you're eligible for at any time.

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 Brazil, Canada, and Mexico from the same US warehouses you already use.

5 Fast Facts About Remote Fulfillment with FBA

Remote Fulfillment with FBA can help you tap into a new market for your products. But as with any Amazon service for sellers, you need to understand how it works. Here are a few of the main facts to be aware of.

1) Customers Still Get Free Shipping

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 Brazil, Canada, and Mexico though. Customers still get the benefit of free shipping, but they don’t get the one or two-day shipping options common for Prime customers in the US.

2) Customers Cover Import Fees

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.

3) It’s different from FBA Export

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.

4) You Can Use Automatic Listing Creation to Make it Easier

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 Brazil, 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.

5) Remote Fulfillment Fees Will Apply

The fee structure for remote fulfillment will be familiar to most Amazon sellers. What you pay is based on the greater of either the unit weight or dimensional weight for most size tiers. 

If you're already using the program, you’ll want to take a close look when Amazon makes fee changes so you can make any necessary price adjustments to your products.

How to Enroll in the Program

Before you can sign up for remote fulfillment via FBA, check that you’re registered for FBA in the US, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico, that you have a North American 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.

Sell Throughout North America

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 Brazil, 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.

You can use RestockPro by eComEngine to manage your FBA inventory in the US, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. Make smarter restocking decisions and keep an eye on SKU profitability by marketplace.

Will you give it a try or are you already enrolled? Let us know!