Amazon offers a ton of nifty features for sellers using their marketplace.
Amazon Prime eligibility, the coveted Amazon's Choice label, and FBA, or ‘Fulfilled By Amazon.’ FBA can be an incredibly valuable tool, so we’ll use this post to focus on exactly what FBA is and how you can qualify for it.
What Is Amazon’s FBA?
In short, it means Amazon stores and ships your products for you in their warehouses. Instead of your products and shipping them taking up your resources, Amazon can take that off your hands and ultimately get your products out faster and make things more pleasant for everyone.
But only if you qualify!
How Do You Qualify?
Qualifying for FBA can be broken down into a few different areas that are mainly common sense.
You’ll need to have an Amazon Seller account.
To do that, you’ll have to create one. Decide on what you’re selling and whether or not you’ll need an individual or professional account.
Which account type you’ll choose depends on the size of your business and sales revenue.
- Individual would be best for very small or individual businesses - as the name name implies.
- Professional is better suited for larger businesses with larger sales volumes.
The next thing you want to check is that your products match up to Amazon’s product restriction guidelines.
These are mainly common sense, like if it isn’t legal in the U.S., then it doesn’t qualify for FBA.
Beer (both regular and non-alcoholic) also doesn’t qualify for FBA, and the same holds true for paper lanterns, loose batteries, tires, gift cards, and some others.
The last thing to look out for is your inventory packaging.
As stated earlier, FBA means that Amazon stores your inventory in one of Amazon’s warehouses. In order for that to happen, your product packaging has to actually meet their inventory packaging and labelling standards.
While the requirements are specific from category to category, there are a few points in common.
For example, every packaged item must have a barcode, either from the manufacturer or from Amazon, in an accessible, readable position. Otherwise, Amazon won’t take it.
Packaging should be tight and in a standard 6-sided box so that there’s no sliding around or breaking during shipping. Also, nothing requiring assembly in order to ship will qualify for FBA.
While this isn’t an in-depth view of all the qualifications for Amazon’s FBA tool, this overview will give you enough of a general idea to be able to start prepping your inventory to qualify for FBA and get you one step farther in the process of selling on Amazon!
