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Greg has sold on Amazon for about 2 ½ years now so he has quite a bit of experience with selling. Greg saw an opportunity while he was selling. He hated doing the prep work. It took a lot of time and kept him away from what actually made him money, sourcing and working with suppliers. So he started FBA Prep UK almost two years ago as a solution for Amazon sellers.
Why bother with prep at all? Why not just send directly from China or supplier to Amazon?
First of all, things happen to products. It’s more common with air, there’s a lot more handling and a lot more opportunity for packaging to be damaged. From the supplier not doing what their supposed to, then sending it to the plane, loading and unloading from the plane, then to the Amazon warehouse.
Sometimes the products show up without packaging. It may have been repackaged by the shipping company because it was in such bad shape. Amazon won’t accept that. They have very high standards for what they expect and if it arrives damaged, they will not accept it. It will either be removed or destroyed.
To avoid all this, you’ll want the products to be inspected before they go to the warehouse. You can do this yourself but you will soon realize how much time and effort it takes to go through everything.
So what prep do you need to do for Amazon?
Obviously, everything will have to have a scan-able barcode, i.e. EAN or UPC work fine. Most products that come from China do so in a poly-bad or a plain white box with no identification on it. Amazon cannot accept that. They are a massive operation that cannot deviate from their processes. Prep companies, being smaller and working with you directly, have the flexibility to ensure the products are packaged correctly before Amazon gets them.
For the items that come in the poly-bag, can you repack those?
These bags are quite brittle and are too thin so they don’t meet Amazon standards. They have to be sealed or they have to have a suffocation warning label is the opening is more than 5 ½ inches. These aren’t Chinese regulations, so unless you specifiably request this, it won’t be done. Sometimes it won’t happen if you do specify it. Keep in mind that your supplier is likely not to comply with your instructions. There is very little chance of getting your money back should they mess up. Typically the only recourse is a discount on your next shipment.
If you hire an inspection company and everything checks out at the factory, what are some other things that can go wrong?
If it’s in a poly-bag, it’s pretty much ok. The problem starts if you have it in a box that gets thrown in to a shipping container. By sea is better because there is less handling. It doesn’t get handled much until it arrives gets put on a pallet.
Greg recommends contacting the supplier and having them ship extra boxes. Many times some of them will get hit by a forklift and the packaging gets messed up which will be rejected by Amazon. The products are fine but because the box is messed up it becomes unsaleable. If you don’t have extra boxes you have to contact the supplier after the fact. The supplier will likely not send you the extras until your next shipment which leaves you with 10-15% of your products sitting around until you’re ready to order again.
Greg’s standards are whether or not he would be happy to receive it. If he order an item off Amazon, would he be happy to receive it in that condition? If not, he would send it in until it gets repacked. This is also to protect you. Amazon shoppers are picky. They will rate a product low based on the packaging. Even if the product is great but the packaging was awful, they might leave a poor review. So it’s worth it to wait to send it in rather than risk a poor review.
So if you bother with prep, why use a Prep company?
It depends on your circumstances. Whether or not you have the space and means of handling them. Make sure to receive the samples at home so you have a change to inspect them before making a large purchase.
Some people don’t realize how large their orders are. So when you try to prep 100 or 150 units, you realize that you don’t want to be doing that for 500 or 1000. 1000 units, you’re probably looking at a pallet. You have to make sure you have a place to put a pallet.
Greg had a customer call him one time about 2000 piece order that was about to dock and he was told that it was going to be two maybe three pallets. He hadn’t realize how large it was going to be and was planning on fitting it in his two-bedroom flat on the 16th floor. This would not have been remotely possible to do on his own. He had to have the help of a prep company that has the means to handle such an order.
Also, this is almost required for some sellers that do it as a side gig and they have full-time jobs and they do their sourcing and dealing with suppliers in the evening. They have no time to be messing with prep work because they have their full-time job. It’s not feasible for them to do it on their own.
What are the main steps you go through to prepare for Amazon?
- Check cartons
- Unpack & Check boxes
- Inspect outer cartons and items themselves
- FNSKU barcodes
- Have a report/structured record
- Inbound Shipping to Amazon
What are the biggest mistakes you’ve found sellers make with freight that you’ve come across?
The story before, about the guy that didn’t know what he was going to do when it arrived. There is a scam going around where the supplier offers you shipping terms. They offer FOB prices to the port in China and CIF prices Felixstowe.
To clarify some terms, FOB is “Freight on Board”. The Chinese will pay the expenses to get your goods from their factory to the port of departure. CIF, Carriage, insurance and freight, is the exact same thing to the UK ports. So they exported the products, put it on a boat, and it will arrive at the docks in Felixstowe or South Hampton. From dockside, you have to organize onward freight and customs clearance. In Greg’s experience he got the same price for FOB in China and the CIF in the UK. It got to the UK and it seemed like it was all a part of the service, but after talking to he Freight Forwarding partner he was told it was a scam.
When it gets to the UK, the handling agents have to pay the shipping charge. It’s not free, it just gets passed on the UK agents who then pass it on to you. You then, also have to pay your normal VAT import duties, and custom clearance duty fee. He has heard figures of £600-1000 just to release the product. If you don’t pay them, you don’t get your product. They then start charging you storage fees and the costs just start rising.
What are the warning signs to look out for?
The supplier will offer you terms that look remarkably good. “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” Ask for prices from other freight forwarders. Even if it just to give you an indication of what the cost might be and if the Chinese guys stack up and looks about the same, you should be fine. But if it’s considerably cheaper, then at least you know what prices you can expect.
What are some basic dos and don’ts of working with a prep company?
The biggest thing is trust. At the end of the day, you’re sending a large investment, thousands of pounds worth of product, to someone you don’t know. You don’t know if they exist. As an entity, they could just be a website and an email address and you end up sending your stuff to them. Make sure your happy with them, call them up, look for social proof. Just make sure you’re real.
Keep in mind they are an extension of you, they’re not the importer on record. They don’t have importing responsibilities, they are simply a delivery point for you. You need to tell your supplier that. Greg has gotten invoices coming in with his name on them. Then DHL, or whichever shipping company will send him an invoice for the duties. He will send that on to the customer, but the invoice is in his name. So that makes it difficult for the customer to put it in their accounts.
Even if you’re out of the country, they will be your delivery point. So it will be your name, your company, at their address. So the invoice will go to the prep company who will then forward it to you. If it’s been agreed, they will pay the duties.
Tell them it coming. As ridiculous as it sounds, inform them of it’s arrival. The worst thing for Greg is to receive six pallets of products and have no idea who it belongs to. All they have is his name on the invoice.
Watch Amazon Product Prep with Greg Jones of FBA Prep UK
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