“4 Must-Know Changes to Amazon Policies in 2021” (Source: Lab 916)
1. Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke, announced Amazon will be postponing its logistics fee increases until June 1, 2021 to support businesses affected by the pandemic.
2. Amazon has announced additional updates to Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) in order to “improve delivery speed” for Prime customers regardless of who fulfills the order.
3. It’ll Be Harder to Sell On Amazon. Amazon’s product restrictions, unprompted suspensions, and new policy on dietary supplements create a few new hoops for legitimate brands to jump through before selling on Amazon.
We don’t think they’ll be stopping at health and wellness products. It will get harder for no-name brands without a presence outside of Amazon to succeed.
4. Brand Registry becomes more important. Brand tools will allow small, medium, and large businesses to create their own custom experience for Amazon shoppers.
Additionally, we wouldn’t be surprised if brand registered Sellers will have the ability for approved sellers to prevent hijackers and counterfeits from applying branded listings to their phony products.
Our experts expect the premium, A+ content video modules to be available to brand registered Amazon Sellers soon, as Amazon Advertising has determined that videos are one of the most effective types of content.
“Thank you to Amazon customers, employees, and selling partners for a record-breaking holiday season” (Source: Amazon)
Amazon stated that they had a “record-breaking holiday season” with its “biggest-ever customer savings, small business growth, and community giving.”
Amazon delivered billions of items during this season, including more than 1.5 billion toys, home products, electronics, and beauty and personal care products.
Small and medium-sized third-party businesses in the US sold nearly 1 billion products via Amazon and saw worldwide sales grow 50% over the holiday season compared with 2019.
Throughout this year, Amazon invested billions of dollars to help small- and medium-sized businesses continue to grow and they say this year was the “best ever” holiday season for independent sellers on Amazon.
Amazon also touted its efforts to keep deliveries flowing during the pandemic, saying it “invested more than $10 billion to help keep employees safe and deliver products to customers.”
“Sellers Knock Amazon Storage and Restock Limits” (Source: eCommerceBytes)
Some sellers were puzzled over basic elements of Amazon’s IPI announcement last week, and some also debated how fair those metrics were taking note of the fact that they were still subject to restock quantity limits on a product level and asked when Amazon would lift those limits.
Sellers say it is complicated because each seller has to deal with the storage limit and the restock limit while the storage limit also varies by category.
Another seller said the restock limits that Amazon put in place at the beginning of the 4th quarter were doable but called the new limits that went into effect around the second week of December draconian. “You just can’t stay in stock with the current restrictive restock limits and the amount of time Amazon is taking to receive inventory and make it available.”
One seller pointed out that sellers had different ideas on how Amazon should have handled space restrictions, depending on if they were selling seasonal goods or launching new products, for example.
The seller also theorized that the Covid-era IPI calculation was based mostly on $ sold / cubic foot. “If you sell relatively large / relatively inexpensive items, you will have a low IPI regardless of other metrics. If the formula goes back to normal, Sell-through seems to be the most important factor.”
Overall, complaints around inbound shipments to Amazon Fulfillment Centers are chronic and were worse this year.
As you may be aware, the UK and EU have reached a Free Trade Agreement which will take effect from January 1, 2021, following the end of the Brexit transition period, subject to being approved in the UK and EU Parliaments.
Amazon continues to review the details of this Agreement and will update sellers as and when they have more information.
In the meantime, you can continue to find the latest Government advice for the UK at gov.uk/transition, or via your local Government website.
The UK’s deal with the EU affects your business if you are importing goods from the EU, exporting goods to the EU, or moving goods to or from Northern Ireland.
Amazon states that they will remain committed to supporting you now and into the future.
