Amazon has introduced its new Amazon Warehousing & Distribution (AWD) service to support its sellers with purpose-built facilities that offer bulk inventory storage and automated distribution. The offering is currently available to FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) sellers who are able to store and distribute their inventory within the ecommerce giant’s fulfillment network. Starting in 2023, sellers will be able to send inventory to any location, including wholesale customers or brick-and-mortar stores, through AWD services.
The new pay-as-you-go offering, which aims to cut costs for sellers as they grow their businesses, has been designed to offer:
- Easy enrollment;
- A one-click process for sending inventory to the company’s distribution centers;
- Reduced storage costs;
- Elimination of complex pricing structures and long-term contracts;
- Easier integration of upstream inventory storage operations with the company’s fulfillment network; and
- Simplified operations with one pool of inventory.
A recent survey of U.S. Amazon sellers revealed that their three largest challenges in upstream warehousing and distribution are high prices for storage, complicated fee structures and insufficient storage capacity.
“As an Amazon seller for over 10 years, we are super excited about the Amazon Warehousing & Distribution service as it’s something that sellers have been seeking for a very long time,” said Harris Chan, Senior Business Manager at AmaMax in a statement. “Automated replenishment and master case handling are the keys of the program.”
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In April 2022, the company created the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF) to support the development of solutions that would facilitate customer fulfillment, logistics and the supply chain. During the Amazon Accelerate annual seller conference, which will take place Sept. 14-15, 2022, the company will expand upon the benefits of AWD in addition to other new offerings.
