Amazon gives thousands of people in the UK the opportunity to sell through their marketplace, allowing small businesses to reach a huge audience by joining Amazon Seller Central. This is open to everyone with two subscription models, the individual selling plan or the professional selling plan.
Professional selling plan: This plan is right for you if you will be selling over 35 items a month. The professional selling plan carries a flat fee of £25 per month and no per-item fee.
Individual selling plan: This plan is for those that will sell less than 35 items per month and there is a 75p fee for each item sold.
If you have been selling on Amazon for a little while you may have heard about Amazon Vendor Central.
What is Amazon Vendor Central?
Amazon Vendor Central is a platform which allows businesses to sell their products to Amazon in bulk at wholesale prices. Once Amazon has your stock they will sell it and facilitate the customer journey through to delivery and customer service.
There are certain areas which the seller is still responsible for managing. For example:
- The Wholesale Price
- Product Descriptions
- PPC & other Advertising Activity
Amazon honours a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) but, aside that will set pricing as they see fit aiming for volume sales and turning a profit.
This is a model which suits manufacturers that operate in a predominantly wholesale space as they will be used to the longer payment terms that Amazon offers its vendors. These can either be 30 days, which comes at a 2% cost, 60 days or 90 days. This means that if you are dependent on a monthly payout, Amazon Vendor Central may not be right for you.
Vendor Central comes with a few perks compared to Seller Central though. Being a vendor allows for more scope to create high quality content which will rank products better. These product pages are known as A+ Detail Pages. There are also more advertising options as a vendor. The Vendor version of Amazon Marketing Services includes hyper-targeted keyword based ad-campaigns to drive traffic directly to product pages.
How do I join Amazon Vendor Central?
Unfortunately, unlike Seller Central you can’t just “join” Vendor Central. Brands are invited to join Vendor Central by Amazon themselves and there is no application or cheat sheet to guarantee an invite. The best way to try and obtain one is to show that you are selling a quality and high in demand product
When you are invited, Amazon will lay out their terms, including the wholesale price they’re looking to pay. There is usually a little room for negotiation, but not a lot, remember you cannot expect to be receiving the same return on each product as if you were selling it first hand.
Within the Vendor Central interface, vendors have the option to adjust pricing to match what Amazon is after, or alternatively can mark their stock as unavailable if the pricing is still not up to par.
What happens if I change my mind and don’t want to join?
If you have received an invite from Amazon to join Vendor Central but after reading their terms decide it is not something you are interested in, can you reject their invite? Yes, you of course can decide to not take them up on their offer and usually this will have no negative repercussions.
There are only some instances where this may be an issue:
- You are a manufacturer
- You sell through Amazon marketplace (Seller Central)
- You sell to other retailers or distributors
When this is the case, Amazon expects to be treated like any other potential retailer with access to wholesale prices, and so can potentially suspend your Seller Central account if you don’t reach an agreement.
If you are unsure where to start with Vendor Central or still cannot decide whether it is right for you, employ the help of Vendor Central Agency like Arthia, their Amazon Consultants are ready to hear your unique challenges and can help with range of services depending on your needs, such as:
- Logistics, including fulfilment
- Reporting & Forecasting
- Customer Service
- Marketing & Advertising, including Amazon PPC, SEO and Content Writing
- Inventory Management
- Compliance
- Market Research