FBA Inventory Dates For Holiday Deal Events
- To maximize your holiday sales, plan ahead to make sure that your FBA inventory arrives at fulfillment centers on time for Q4 deal events. To stay in stock during holiday deal events, we recommend that your FBA inventory arrives at US fulfillment centers by the following dates:
- Prime Fall Deal Event: September 12
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday: October 26
- It may take longer to ship inventory to fulfillment centers during the busy holiday season. Check your recommended replenishment quantity and plan shipments now to have your most popular products in stock.
2023 Holiday Peak Fulfillment Fee for Fulfillment by Amazon
- Amazon will implement the annual Holiday Peak Fulfillment Fee for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) from October 15, 2023, to January 14, 2024. This fee covers increased operating costs during the busy holiday season. The rates remain unchanged from 2022 for US and Canada FBA. Despite the fee, Amazon’s fulfillment fees are still 30% cheaper than standard shipping methods of other logistics providers. The fee applies to various FBA services except for US FBA items priced under $10. Detailed fee rates are available on Amazon’s help pages and below.
- US Fulfillment by Amazon Fee Rates
- CA Fulfillment by Amazon Fee Rates
- Remote Fulfillment with FBA Fee Rates
- Multi-Channel Fulfillment Rates – US, Canada
Offer Percentage-off Discounts With Manage Your Customer Engagement
- The “Manage Your Customer Engagement” tool for registered brands on Amazon. With this tool, brands can send percentage-off promotional codes to their Amazon customers. The discounts range from 15% to 50% and can be targeted at specific audiences, including repeat customers, recent customers, high-spend customers, and brand followers. Customizable budgets are available for creating and sending promotions. To start using this feature, you need to access it through the Brands tab in Seller Central, select your brand, choose the audience type, and select an eligible promotion. If no promotions are available, you can create one under the Advertising tab in Seller Central. Finally, you enter email details and submit the campaign. For more information, there’s a help page available.
- Click the Brands tab in Seller Central and select Customer Engagement.
- Select the brand, and select the audience type that you want to send the promo code to. Be sure to select Promote a promotion as your campaign type.
- Select an eligible promotion.
- If you have no available promotions, go to the Advertising tab in Seller Central, select Promotions and then select Percentage off.
- Enter email details and submit the campaign
Shopify Says Merchants Can Use Amazon’s ‘Buy with Prime’ Option
- Canada’s Shopify has announced that Amazon will release an app within Shopify’s app ecosystem. This app will grant U.S.-based Shopify merchants access to Amazon’s “Buy with Prime” option. Shopify merchants who also use Amazon’s fulfillment network will be able to integrate the Buy with Prime app into Shopify Checkout, processed by Shopify Payments. This integration will allow Shopify merchants to offer Prime members benefits such as fast and free delivery, even outside of Amazon.com. Shopify has been attracting businesses as retail spending improves due to more stable economic conditions, leading to strong revenue growth and better-than-expected second-quarter results in August.
Amazon Tests $35 Free Shipping Minimum
- Amazon is conducting a test where they are raising the minimum order requirement for free shipping from $25 to $35 for select non-Prime members. The test is being conducted in specific regions grouped by zip codes. This move comes as Amazon seeks ways to manage rising operational and delivery costs. CEO Andy Jassy mentioned in a recent earnings call that the company is focused on optimizing delivery costs while maintaining fast service for Prime customers. Earlier in the year, Amazon also changed the free delivery threshold for Amazon Fresh, increasing it from $35 to $150 for Prime shoppers, and introduced service fees on some Amazon Fresh delivery orders to help cover costs.
- Amazon has updated its policy for sellers in specific categories, including adult DVDs, books, magazines, and calendars. While the announcement didn’t provide specific details about the changes, it stated that the update aims to provide clearer image guidelines for listings. Amazon now strictly prohibits any listings or product detail page images that contain explicit sexual content. Sellers in these categories are advised to review their images and ensure compliance with the new guidelines. If no action is taken by September 27, 2023, affected listings will face restrictions in search or suppression. Further information on these listing guidelines can be found on Amazon Seller Central.
- Major websites, including Amazon and The New York Times, have taken steps to block GPTBot, a web crawling tool used by OpenAI to gather data for training its ChatGPT chatbot. As of the recent weeks, 70 of the top 1,000 websites globally have decided to block GPTBot. These websites include Amazon, nytimes.com, cnn.com, wikihow.com, shutterstock.com, and quora.com, among others.
- The blocking mechanism involves using a file called “robots.txt,” a tool from the 1990s meant to prevent web crawlers from extracting data. OpenAI had previously stated it would respect robots.txt and not crawl websites using it. However, some websites have opted to use this method to block GPTBot due to concerns about copyright and data ownership.
- The use of web crawlers like GPTBot to train AI models has raised copyright and ownership issues, leading to legal concerns and lawsuits. OpenAI has tried to mitigate these concerns by avoiding the use of copyrighted material in training ChatGPT. The analysis indicates that the percentage of top websites blocking GPTBot has been steadily increasing since its launch
Amazon Brand Incubator Benitago Files for Bankruptcy
- Benitago, a company specializing in Amazon brand development, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to a significant downturn in its fortunes as eCommerce trends shifted. Some acquired brands didn’t perform as expected. The company aims to restructure, potentially selling parts of its business and refocusing on in-house brands. Benitago lists assets and liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. This bankruptcy follows a period of rapid growth and funding, highlighting the challenges in the eCommerce landscape.
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