Amazon MCF & Other Fulfillment Providers (UK)

[LA_GENT1]

I am considering moving our fullfilment out of house and looking for some advice/recommendations. I've looked through Amazon MCF and its a bit of a minefield to work out likely costs. Are there any other providers suitable for a small e-commerce operation - ~350 orders a month. Main goal is cost reduction and ideally some flexibility with branding etc. 

[JoesIdeas]

I've used Amazon UK MCF, and ShipBob in the past. 

We used Amazon US and Amazon UK, were based out of the US but used the Amazon UK inventory to ship orders there. One way to do it is setup Amazon locations around the world, then use an app like Order Automator to connect them to your Shopify store and automatically route orders from your Amazon inventory.

We also used ShipBob, they had more customization options (branding, bundles, etc). I don't recall the price difference but I would recommend reaching out to each service (and others if you have other potential candidates) and give them an example of a few products, inventory level over the course of a month, sales over the course of a month, etc, and they should be able to provide an estimate for you.

Benefit of that multiple Amazon locations strategy I mentioned is that you can ship "locally" in many regions all over the world. We used to ship from our manufacturer directly to the different Amazon regions.

Benefit of a dedicated 3rd party service like ShipBob is better control over how your product is presented. Amazon offers unbranded boxing, but it's not available in all regions yet.

If you're already selling on Amazon UK, just switch a product in Shopify to fulfill from there, then monitor the costs.

If you try a 3rd party fulfillment service, I would recommend making sure there isn't a long term contract, so then you could try it for a couple months, monitor the costs and the service, then decide if it's a good long term solution.

[LA_GENT1]

This is really helpful and detailed. I wasn't familiar  with Shipbob so thank you!

[abhishek_jain]

Certainly! If you're considering moving your fulfillment out of house and aim for cost reduction with flexibility in branding, Amazon MCF is an excellent option. 

To streamline the process, I recommend using the Amazon MCF app by WebBee. This app seamlessly connects your Shopify store to Amazon Fulfillment, providing efficient order management. It not only syncs orders but also takes care of inventory and tracking, allowing you to concentrate on your business activities while ensuring a smooth and reliable fulfillment process.