Five Star Commerce

Amazon Prime Day has been announced for July 11th-12th!

Prime Day is a shopping event with deals exclusively for Prime members. Anyone can participate in Prime Day by becoming a member of Amazon Prime.

For most brands, it's going to make sense to enroll at lease some of your products as "Prime Day Deals." This is important because it distinguishes these products as part of the event. Customers on Amazon during these two days can filter through Amazon products specifically for these "Prime Day Deals" so that only products enrolled in this marketing event are shown. As can be imagined, this can be a great opportunity to find new customers and promote your products.

That being said, we have found that for some products, these deals are not always helpful. Typically, items such as dietary supplements or other health products might not benefit from Prime Day as much as other products. Talk to your project manager about Prime Day to see if enrolling products in this marketing event makes sense for you.

We can still register for these deals if you haven't already. The minimum discount required to enroll is 20%.

Walmart+ Week July 6th - July 13th:

In competition with Amazon, Walmart has announced they are doing a "Walmart+ Week." This is an event that gives Walmart+ members exclusive access to thousands of savings on tech products, home decor, clothing, toys, and more. The event will run from July 6th - July 13th. Members will also have first dibs on special deals for items on a long list of "summer must-haves" on July 10th at noon EST.

If you are interested in participating in Walmart+ Week, please speak to your project manager about this as they can help you determine a plan that is best for you. You may also want to match your Prime Day discounts on Walmart if you're selling on both platforms.

INFORM Verification:

As most of you know, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created the INFORM Consumers Act in 2022. The Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) for Consumers Act requires that all marketplaces (including Amazon) authenticate various business information including tax ID's, government ID's, contact details, and bank account data. All of this information confirms the legitimacy of businesses and makes the online shopping process more transparent.

Please make sure that you are continuing to work on getting the verifications done so that your business can continue to operate smoothly without interruption. Part of this process involves verifying your business address through the reception of a postcard in the mail. This is a physical postcard that will arrive in the mail containing a verification code needed to confirm your business address. Some brands are waiting on Amazon for the postcard to arrive in the mail. If this is you, Amazon has told us that they won't be suspending accounts just because you haven't gotten the postcard in the mail before the 27th. Account suspension will only take place if you fail verification after several tries to verify the business address. That being said, please make sure to check for the postcard so that you can verify the business address as soon as possible, preventing further problems from happening later on.

If you have other items that Amazon is waiting on to confirm your business information, they will likely show up in your "account health" section with instructions to resolve the issue. Please follow these instructions. You can ask your project manager if you have questions to ensure that everything has been taken care of. At the end of the process, Amazon does send a final email saying that the INFORM verification has been completed.


Seller Investigators:

We are recommending that all of our clients sign up for the service that Seller Investigators offers, so that they can make sure to get reimbursed for anything that Amazon owes them. We've secured a lower 20% rate for all of our clients (industry standard is 25% - 30%). Please, use this link to sign up:

https://ps.carbon6.io/fivestarcommerceSI

If you have questions about it, ask your project manager. If they don't get any money back from Amazon for you, it doesn't cost anything. This is the type of service every seller should have checking their account regularly. Industry estimates are that sellers on average are eligible for reimbursements for 1-2% of their sales.

What is Fulfillment by Amazon and How Amazon Consultants Can Help:

If you’re looking to sell your brands products on Amazon, it’s typically best to use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). This is where you ship the inventory into Amazon’s warehouses ahead of time and Amazon ships the individual products to the customer as the orders are made. However setting it up might be a very tedious task because of the guidelines that Amazon provides for you to follow, these will be discussed in the section below.

What do you get with Amazon Fulfillment?
When you choose to sell on Amazon using the Fulfillment by Amazon option, you do not have to worry about logistics from storage of your product to shipping. Upon storage, products will be catalogued and added to the ready-to-ship inventory. When your product is ordered, Amazon will handle the shipping. Finally, you also get Amazon to handle after purchase services such as returns and refunds. If the carrier delivers the product late, Amazon takes the blame. If you’re not using FBA, Amazon will blame you and it will hurt your stats and visibility, even in situations where you had no control. In addition to the logistical benefits, products that are sold via FBA see much higher conversion rates, higher rankings in searches, and qualify for special programs that require FBA. For brands that are using a new Amazon selling account, they will often find that they won’t win the buybox (even when no other seller is selling their product) unless they are using FBA. That makes launching onto Amazon a much more difficult and slow process.

What is your role when you use Amazon Fulfillment?
With Amazon Fulfillment, as a seller, you basically do not have to do anything right? Well, that is not really entirely true. Sellers who utilize fulfillment by Amazon will still have some role to play in order to ensure that products will constantly be available. So here are the three things that you as the seller will be responsible for.

Monitor inventory levels – In general, you want to make sure your inventory in FBA is going to sell within 3-4 months. You don’t want inventory sitting for a long time and you don’t want to run out of stock. This is because it can affect your IPI Score or your Inventory Performance Index. Recently, Amazon has set a new guideline for the IPI Score and if your IPI score is lower than the required score you will be subjected to storage volume limits. One factor that lowers IPI score is excessive inventory and this can happen if your products are not selling, so send in appropriate amounts of inventory.

Properly label products – If you don’t understand how Amazon’s system uses barcodes, it can be difficult to understand how products need to be labeled. Mislabeled or incompletely labeled products could end up as stranded inventory and could again affect your IPI score. Each product needs a barcode that identifies an individual unit. This is typically a UPC code or an Amazon “FNSKU.” They need to be visible and no other barcodes should be visible on the product. If your products are case packed, you would also put labels on each box and need to tell Amazon how many units are in each box along with the weight and dimensions of each box.

Pack your products – Since your products will be stored at the fulfillment center you have to properly pack them and ready for shipping. Packing also requires you to comply with Amazon’s shipping and routing requirements and failure to do so may result in the refusal of the inventory at the Amazon fulfillment center, return of the inventory or disposal of the same. Often products can be damaged in shipping and, if that happens, Amazon will hold you responsible. You need to make sure products are packed in a way that will get them to customers safely.
Ship your products to Amazon – When shipping your products to the Amazon Fulfillment center you basically do the following. First is to create a shipping plan, make sure the products are appropriately barcoded, put on the box labels, and finally ship the products to the Amazon fulfillment center.

For brands using FBA for the first time, it can be difficult to apply these principles to the specifics of your products. You might end up having stranded or excessive products which might lower your IPI score. While you can go through the learning curve and make a few errors along the way wouldn’t it be better to skip committing the errors and go straight to earning profits from your products? You can do this by consulting with the experts.

Amazon consultants such as those in our team at Five Star Commerce can help guide you on how to properly prepare your products for shipping to the Amazon fulfillment centers. Amazon consultants have experiences in all the aspects of selling on the platform. Our team of experts are well-versed in every aspect selling on Amazon.