Sell on Amazon
Instant access to 300 million international potential customers. By using the ProductFlow platform you can also offer the products you want to sell on Amazon on other marketplaces. You do not have to upload everything again and you keep everything neatly in one place.
Largest marketplace in the world
Amazon is one of the world's largest marketplaces. The fast-growing platform even has a market capitalization of one thousand million dollars today! With up to 300 million global customers, they have a lot to offer merchants. Amazon marketplace is currently active in 15 countries. The Netherlands has recently also been included. From countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Canada, Japan and Mexico, Amazon indirectly serves no fewer than 200 countries. As a seller, you may also be thinking about selling your products through Amazon. What are the benefits of this and how can you get started? And where exactly does Amazon come from?
E-commerce history of Amazon
Amazon now has about 800,000 employees. That hasn't always been the case. Back in July 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. It was a small online bookstore in Seattle, USA. Amazon eventually grew into one of the first major e-commerce companies. Selling through Amazon only became really interesting when the marketplaces realized serious growth. Amazon did this primarily through deals and acquisitions. In 2009, for example, they took over the Zappos shoe trader and in 2010 they bought Quidsi, a webshop with baby care products and household items. The many acquisitions made Amazon a success. In 2019 they had a turnover of no less than 280 billion dollars! In short: selling on Amazon offers you a steady base shop within a globally known marketplace.
Selling via Amazon services: this is how it works
Ready to start your selling account? As mentioned, Amazon has two different sales services: self-selling and Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). Think carefully about which option best suits your company. For example, it determines the amount of the commission. Here's a little comparison.
Fulfillment By Amazon
- No start-up costs; pay only for the services you use.
- Send your inventory to Amazon.
- Outsource logistics processes.
- Amazon handles returns.
- There is no Amazon fulfillment center in the Netherlands yet; well in Germany.
- You will therefore have to apply for a German VAT number.
- Your products are eligible for Amazon Prime.
- Sell for a small additional fee in all 5 European countries.
Self-selling via Amazon
- You need a warehouse for your stock.
- Remain responsible for the logistics processes yourself.
- Also arrange your returns yourself.
- Don't send anything to an Amazon fulfillment center: take control!
- Make time for shipping, returns, and customer service.
- Your products are not eligible for Amazon Prime.
- Pay commission in the form of a referral fee, depending on the product category
Why sell on Amazon with ProductFlow?
Do you want to reach millions of potential customers across Europe? Then selling via Amazon is definitely a good choice! Besides this large reach, why should you start selling on Amazon? There are lots of good reasons for that.
With Amazon, you only need one account to sell through different marketplaces. So you only pay one standard monthly amount. With this you can have your stuff returned to the Spanish, French or German Amazon in addition to Amazon NL.
This way you can easily expand abroad, without too much effort. You are not even obliged to translate all your content. Very handy if you don't speak French, Spanish and Italian. You also don't have to worry about connecting foreign payment options with Amazon.
Long, ongoing contracts can be annoying. Fortunately, with Amazon, despite the monthly costs, you are not tied to a time-bound subscription. So you have little to lose! Do you not like selling via Amazon or do you prefer not to do it? Then you can get rid of it in no time!
You can start and stop selling on Amazon whenever you want. This can be beneficial for many companies. For example, you can only sell seasonally.
As with many other marketplaces, you do not need your own webshop to sell via Amazon. An own webshop with its own customer portal can of course have advantages. For example, it is your online business card.
Unfortunately, running a webshop takes a lot of time and energy. And it's not easy to stand out. Don't feel like that? Very understandable! To sell via Amazon you can have your own webshop, but you don't have to. This way you can realize your first e-commerce transactions via an online shop-in-shop.
That's not bad at all! Amazon's European reputation is one that an individual webshop can only dream of. Why not take advantage of that?
To send products yourself, you must set up a reasonable warehouse, transport contract and good order handling. Do you have storage space and everything in order? Absolutely great. You can just keep using it. When selling via Amazon, you can choose to ship your own products.
Would you rather outsource these logistical activities? That is also possible! At Amazon you can choose the Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) option. You send your stock to an Amazon distribution center, where they take care of the rest for you. That is not only easier for you, but also for your customers, because of the later, latest order time for next-day delivery.
Do you want to sell more than 40 items per month? Then you pay 39 euros per month, in addition to the commission that Amazon receives for every transaction.
The best way to sell your products on Amazon
Do you also want to start selling on Amazon or do you want to optimize your current products and make them easier to find for consumers? Contact us! Because via our platform you manage the content, orders, sales prices, delivery times and stocks for the whole of Amazon Europe, Amazon USA and Amazon Canada. Furthermore, our automated switch function ensures that when the stock at FBA is exhausted, it automatically switches to its own stock and vice versa.
Offering your products at the same time on multiple marketplaces is also very quick and easy. Born from practice, ProductFlow is the ideal tool for easy (international) scaling up.