Amazon just made two announcements recently regarding shipments and storage. While the announcements are region-specific for now, we often see rollouts to other selling regions soon after.
1. Shipment Performance Dashboard
The first announcement is for US sellers. The eComm giant rolled out a new dashboard called Shipment Performance to help you:
- Compare your shipping Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Amazon performance targets.
- Use the insights from your KPI analysis to fix shipment issues.
- Track overall logistics performance.
- Manage your FBA shipments more easily.
This should add a new layer of analysis to spot and correct issues along the supply chain which is something we love. Being able to, for example, identify mislabeling, unscannable barcodes, or unplanned prep, could be signs that your supplier or prep center should have more attention to detail to avoid these issues.
With more monitoring of issues like these, though, it does open up the possibility of more Performance alerts and penalties. The dashboard indicates suspensions could be triggered due to shipping issues, though we hope this mostly refers to improperly labeled products. It is just another thing to be aware of.
While the dashboard is not without its early bugs and leaves us with unanswered questions for now, we hope this dashboard proves insightful for your inventory team.
2. New Storage Type: Extra-Large
This announcement is for sellers in the UK.
Beginning April 18, a new storage type will be available to UK sellers: Extra-Large (XL), which is in addition to the Oversize storage type.
According to Amazon, it will automatically reclassify your FBA products that qualify for the XL storage type. A separate FBA quantity limit for XL and Oversize inventory will also be determined based on:
- Sales history
- Sales forecasts
- Amazon fulfillment center capacity
The Extra Large inventory category will be for items larger than Oversize.
Oversize items become items with the longest side at or over 45cm, median 34cm or above, and the shortest at 26cm or more. Weight is 11.90kg or more.
Extra Large will be either longest side at 175cm or more or unit weight 23kg or higher OR longest side 120cm or above and weight 15kg or more. Confusing to wrap your head around and the devil is in the conjunctions.
Understanding what category your products fall in will likely make a difference in fulfillment fees, but that is yet to be defined because Amazon did not say how the new storage type will impact the current FBA fulfillment fees.
Initial thoughts though, we can’t help but grit our teeth imagining it will bring about more fees, not less as it has in recent developments we’ve experienced with dimensional weight and the fuel surcharge. Watch for any future announcements on this. We will be sure to keep eyes peeled as well.
Read the news announcement for more information.
