By 24/7 Staff / www.supplychain247.com / March 17th, 2020
Amazon says it will be temporarily prioritizing products coming into their fulfillment centers during the coronavirus crisis with independent merchants unable to ship products other than medical supplies and household items until April 5, 2020.
Amazon Services Announcement
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.
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.
Source: Amazon Services Seller Forums
Impact on Small Business Using Amazon FBA
eSellerCafe's Richard Meldner stated the impact of this situation is dramatic for small business marketplace sellers that do not sell these high demand products.
The company is not suspending sales and they are not keeping small business sellers from listing more products they can fulfill themselves.
In the near term, many sellers may need to look at self-fulfillment as the best possible option to continue selling on Amazon.
Read: Your Supply Chain Needs to Focus on Customer Experience
Amazon in the U.S. is already falling behind in deliveries as the grasps with an unexpected huge search in sales from people panic buying many common products.
This is an unprecedented situation and this decision will certainly make many Amazon sellers question their allegiance to the company.
Amazon Seller Options
Sellers will still have the option to sell goods on Amazon without using the fulfillment centers, provided that they handle the storage of their products and shipping without using Amazon’s services, but many small businesses likely lack the physical space or logistics chain to actually manage that on their own.
Any items currently en route to Amazon’s fulfillment centers will still be accepted, and the existing stocks already at the warehouses mean that shortages might not be apparent immediately.
But the policy means that non-essential items won’t be able to be restocked for weeks, which means that it’ll only be a matter of time before supply starts to run out.
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Comments
Rosalie Steame
It seems to me that the matter here is far from being only a pandemic and similar factors. For me personally, the process of buying online is much more convenient. In addition, on marketplaces like Global Sources en français, you can find everything you need in one place.