This article applies to selling and shipping partners in the United States. To start off lets define what 3PL is and how it generally works. 3PL stands for third party logistics. So what does third party logistics mean....the application is simple, instead of shipping your product directly to Amazon, you ship to a warehouse location in the US who in turn puts it up on racks and stores the product until you are ready to send it to Amazon Fulfillment. When you are ready to send it, you provide the information to the your partner and they ship your cartons to Amazon. Simply put a third party logistics partner (3PL) provides warehouse space for you to ship your product to before it goes to Amazon and then ships it out to Amazon on your schedule. So why do you want to consider this BEFORE Q4 if you sell FB
A on Amazon. Check out the information below provided straight from Amazon Sellers Central website
Let me help you understand what you are looking at. 3PL partners are going to charge you to store your product at their warehouse and that charge is usually by pallet position or by cubic feet. As you can see Amazon charges by cubic foot for storage.
Now how does that compare to most 3PL fees. You will find that most charge $30-50 per pallet space or .56 to .90 per cubic foot. While you might say that the upper end is MORE than Amazon charges, take a look at storage fees during Q4. That equates to $127 per pallet position per month for storage with Amazon. Finding a 3PL partner now is beneficial even if they are allowing you to ship in more than the 200 minimum they are restricting new sellers or new SKUs to ship in.
This information has been provided by Amazonsellershelp.com, a logistics and warehouse company in the USA that helps Amazon FBA sellers. The company is actually owned and managed by a group who sells large volumes on FBA. If interested check out their website.
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