Guiding Our Client Through their First Seller Central Shipment
What We’re Celebrating:
We spearheaded our client’s first-ever Seller Central (SC) shipment, troubleshooting issues along the way and enabling them to complete an order that was 13x to 195x larger than a typical shipment.
Overview:
Before partnering with GO, a brand was selling its products on Amazon through a distributor’s SC account – the distributor would send the brand a purchase order (PO) and pay them for the inventory at pickup or once it shipped to Amazon fulfillment centers (FC). When the brand hired a new CEO, he learned about the distributor relationship and decided he wanted the brand to have its own SC account instead. The new CEO, as well as other members of his team, had worked with GO in the past, so he reached out to our agency to set up a partnership, support them with their new account, and effectively guide them through their first SC order.
The Challenge:
The client had never shipped to Amazon before, meaning there would be many discoveries and learnings that needed to take place to determine the optimal way to get their products to FCs. They also needed to acquire a more in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of SC and how it is different than simply selling their products to distributors.
The Strategy:
Once the distributor relationship ended, GO wanted our client to have inventory available for sale on Amazon through their new SC account as soon as possible. To accomplish this, we took ownership of the brand’s first SC shipment of 39,000 units.
As we navigated the first order, these are some troubleshooting challenges we encountered:
The shipment size was more than truckload, which the SC system doesn’t support. Our operations team collaborated internally and determined it was important to break the order into smaller shipments.
Within SC, each pallet cannot be above a specific weight. To ensure compliance, we confirmed our client’s pallet weights, dimensions, and number of pallets per shipment.
We had 4 different sources for forecasting data (the distributor’s account, the client’s warehouse team, our retail team, and the restock report), so we had to cross-reference each source to ensure we didn’t make any inventory mistakes.
We identified that the distributor had created duplicate listings for several products, so we shipped the listings with the largest number of reviews.
Our operations team consistently emailed our client and Slacked our internal teams throughout this process to make sure:
Everyone was aware of the progression of the shipment’s status.
Our GO team wasn’t promoting or selling products that weren’t in stock yet.
The Results:
We successfully sent our client’s first SC shipment to Amazon FCs. Most SC orders range from 200 to 3,000 units, meaning this order was 13x to 195x larger than typical.
This process helped us create a shipment system for this client and collect information and details to ensure even smoother shipments moving forward.
Need a team dedicated to executing effective SC orders?
Our operations team is ready to take on the task. Whether you are transitioning from a distributor or even moving from fulfilled-by-merchant to fulfilled-by-Amazon, we possess the experience and knowledge to assist you in implementing a new shipment strategy. Contact us to discover more.