On 01.03.2023, after more than a year, Amazon will once again increase the fees for selling and the in-house fulfillment program. The capacity limits will be adjusted, the storage costs increased, the shipping costs accordingly and who wants to get more storage space in the future, must bid for it in the bidding process. In addition, the costs for returns will also increase. With these measures, Amazon is putting more and more pressure on retailers to sell products even faster, and at rising sales prices. Inventory management is therefore becoming more and more a game with fire: if you stock too much, the decision to offer insane discounts or high return costs becomes closer with each passing day. If you send less to Amazon than is in demand, an OOS scenario looms and your ranking is in jeopardy.

For many sellers, the question now arises as to whether they should not rely on an FBM (fulfillment-by-merchant) solution. Here, the merchant itself or its logistics service provider can ship to Amazon customers. This often keeps the costs lower than in the Amazon full service, but the Prime logo is missing in the offer: an important factor for BuyBox and conversion is omitted.

Switch to FBM after all?

But this is where the so-called PBS program (Prime-by-Seller) closes the gap. The retailer is certified via a lengthy test procedure, thus ensuring that it can meet the SLAs (Service Level Agreements) of Amazon Prime and thus keep up with Amazon. This means that a 2-day Prime delivery must be guaranteed with a 99% quota of on-time deliveries. With this certification, you can enjoy the Prime logo even without FBA and henceforth have better cards for BuyBox and sales. However, since this certification is not possible without the necessary IT and logistics structure, many sellers resort to full-service providers such as LIMAL.

LIMAL GmbH's Amazon Seller account has Prime-by-Seller certification and thus we can offer you 1-day Prime delivery in addition to selling your products through our marketplace services. Furthermore, we are happy to help you as a logistics service provider in the certification process of your own Amazon account. By the way: LIMAL can handle PBS via its own DHL contract and does not have to purchase the more expensive DPD labels from Amazon. We are happy to pass these top conditions on to you. So if you are looking for a reliable partner for your FBM business, get in touch with us and we will create a tailor-made offer that suits your needs.

You may also be thinking about a hybrid solution where you want to use both FBA and FBM? No problem. Just come to us with your ideas and we will combine our services as you need them!