Amazon Prioritizing Inbound FBA Shipments
In an effort to help combat the spread of COVID-19, Amazon notified sellers today that they will be prioritizing household staples and medical products that are being sent to their fulfillment centers from now until April 5th.
Amazon’s statement as of March 17, 2020:
“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.
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.
We appreciate your understanding as we prioritize the above products for our customers.
Thank you for your patience, and for participating in FBA.”
We work with several companies across multiple categories and we can confirm that this has taken effect immediately. If a product does not meet the priority requirements, a notification will pop-up to notify the seller that this product can not be shipped to Amazon’s warehouse. It would appear that all products in the Health and Household category are still able to send to Amazon.
Marketplace Velocity’s Approach
Within our own client-base, products such as toothpaste, food, and over-the-counter topical products are still being accepted by Amazon.
Our approach as an agency has been to move these non-priority products to FBM, Fulfilled by Merchant. This is a temporary move to help Amazon handle the overwhelming amount of shipments to its warehouses, and to continue to ship our clients’ products to the customer.
We will be closely monitoring the situation and keep you updated with any changes we see on Amazon. We hope all of you stay safe and healthy during this unfamiliar time.
