Amazon Prioritizing High Demand Products
To support the influx of traffic and increased demand in specific categories, Amazon will be prioritizing household staples and medical supplies on Purchase Orders and receipt and distribution into Fulfillment Centers (FCs), while temporarily disabling shipment creation for products outside of these categories. This change impacts both sellers and vendors. Additionally, for Vendors, the Born to Run ordering program has been suspended until further notice.
Global Overview is recommending that vendors & sellers be aware of current inventory levels in Vendor or Seller Central and for sellers to prepare for the possibility to shift to Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) to cover the demand of products.
Global Overview will follow up directly with our clients in each product classification to determine the level of impact to their business and work together on a path forward.
We will continue to be in touch as more information becomes available, as well as provide any insights or guidance regarding operations, promotions, and/or advertising. In the meantime, do not hesitate to reach out to your team directly for support.
Please see the full text from Amazon:
Temporarily prioritizing products coming into our fulfillment centers
We are closely monitoring the developments of COVID-19 and its impact on our customers, selling partners, and employees.
We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. With this in mind, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.
For products other than these, we have temporarily disabled shipment creation. We are taking a similar approach with retail vendors.
Beginning today retail vendors will see:
Reduced Purchase Orders: We have temporarily paused ordering for products that are not household staples, medical supplies, or other high demand products.
Extended delivery windows for existing purchase orders: We have extended the shipment/delivery windows for some existing purchase orders to give you more time to fulfill the order. Please ship your products toward the end of the extended window.
This will be in effect today through April 5, 2020, and we will let you know once we resume regular operations. Shipments created before today will be received at fulfillment centers.
You can learn more about this on this Help page. Please note that Selling Partner Support does not have further guidance.
We understand this is a change to your business, and we did not take this decision lightly. We are working around the clock to increase capacity and yesterday announced that we are opening 100,000 new full- and part-time positions in our fulfillment centers across the US.