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I recently purchased a product sold on Amazon, but deliberately purchased it from the manufacturer, via their Shopify site, to support them more. Six days late
by XMPPwocky 7y ago
I recently purchased a product sold on Amazon, but deliberately purchased it from the manufacturer, via their Shopify site, to support them more.
Six days later, it arrived.
From an Amazon warehouse. In an Amazon box. Sporting a bright white ASIN sticker.
Hmmmmmmm.
- bdcravens 7y agoThey probably even used an affiliate link when they fulfilled the order.
- da02 7y agoSo the manufacturer was just re-selling stuff from Amazon?
- CamelCaseName 7y agoNo, the manufacturer likely uses Amazon as their fulfillment network as you often get better storage/shipping rates this way. These manufacturer fulfilled network (MFN) orders cost the manufacturer a premium in shipping fees over FBA orders (orders sold/fulfilled through Amazon), but don't carry the referral fee (8-40%). Given this, it is almost always cheaper for the manufacturer to sell off Amazon and ship MFN... if you ignore customer acquisition cost.
- afjl 7y agoWhy is there such a large range for referral fees? And I wonder how the referral fee itself is calculated.
- CamelCaseName 7y agoI apologize, the referral fee range I previously stated is a little misleading. Referral fees for the vast majority of items is 8% to 15%, which in and of itself is a massive range. I believe this is mostly due to the typical margin on each item. Perhaps the typical cost of customer acquisition also plays a role. The minimum is 6% for personal computers, which historically have super slim margins anyhow, and 45% for Amazon Device accessories, probably because Amazon wants to maintain a major advantage over third party accessories (and possibly because they dominate the market for Amazon device accessories, so they're able to charge a major premium)