If you already have a Shopify store or looking to start a you can easily link your existing inventory in FBA and fulfill orders on your website instead. This will help you save time packing and shipping and allow you to scale your business as more orders come in. However with having your own e-commerce channel, you are dealing with your own customer acquisition (SEO, PPC, etc.) and payment processing fees (including Shopify, Paypal or even Amazon Payments).
How much does it cost?
You will simply be charged the amount to your seller account. Amazon will not be provided the price the consumer paid or the shipping amount paid. Only their address, an order ID you provide, and the items needing to be shipped out. Multi-Channel Fulfillment works great whether you are fulfilling for orders through Shopify or your own site. The Amazon Shipping fees, on top of whatever Shopify costs, and marketing costs may sometimes generate less profit at the end so beware on how you price your items.
Benefits of Muli-Channel Fulfillment via Shopify
Fulfilling orders via Shopify is categorized as multi-channel fulfillment (selling directly from your Shopify site). The fulfillment fees are usually more that what you would pay fulfilling through FBA but you aren’t paying the commission that you’d pay on Amazon.
Shopify will also sync your inventory with the current inventory you have in FBA. Shopify makes it very convenient to open your own sales channel while giving you your own control on the customer experience.
There are advantages for having all of your inventory in one place, but there are also disadvantages unless you keep careful integration of inventory quantities. You don’t want to have your website advertising that you have a product that is really out of stock.
What are some of the challenges?
If you care about the way your customers receive the product, I recommend you not using Amazon Muli-Channel Fulfillment. When people order from Amazon, they want the Amazon experience. But when they order from you, getting a product in an Amazon bubble mailer can sometimes be seen as cheap and confusing. Previously, sellers were able to pay additional costs to send Merchant Fulfilled orders in a blank box. Now all orders are sent in Amazon branded boxes.
Having Amazon Muli-Channel Fulfillment does not increase your sales rank on Amazon other than allow you more flexibility on shipping costs. It is usually more cost effective than self-fulfillment.
It’s still better than packing boxes yourself.
