Are you facing the dilemma of choosing between FBA and MFN? If yes, you are not alone. Many Amazon sellers struggle to decide whether they should ship their products using FBA, MFN, or both. Both the order fulfillment options have their own pros and cons. However, the easiest way to choose the right one is analyzing the size of your business and how your product range affects the order fulfillment fees that you’ll have to bear. Let’s dive deeper into this.
FBA and MFN: Understanding the Difference Between The Two
The sellers who choose Fulfilment by Amazon over Merchant Fulfilled Network don’t have to worry about order fulfillment. They have Amazon’s world-class fulfillment service to take care of everything, right from picking and packing to shipping of the product on their behalf. Besides this, Amazon also takes care of customer service and returns. In simple words, FBA gives you freedom from the daily hassles and responsibilities so that you can pay more attention to growing your online business.
The important thing to note here is that this unparalleled order fulfillment service is not available for free. Therefore, it’s suggested that new sellers must check out the fulfillment fees and devise a full-fledged Amazon FBA marketing strategy before signing up. As a new seller, you might find FBA a bit expensive because of the following fees:
Fulfillment fees: This includes the charges for picking your products, packing and shipping them, and handling customer support and product returns. The fee depends upon the weight and size of products.
Inventory storage fees: This includes the charges for every product you store at the fulfillment center. The price varies depending on how long your product stays at their distribution centers. The longer your product stays at the warehouse, the more money you have to shell out as inventory storage fee.
On the other hand, Merchant Fulfilled Network puts the ball in your court. You don’t have to pay any amount for order fulfillment but you are directly responsible for everything, right from picking and packing orders and handling the shipping to providing customer service and managing returns.
Choosing MFN as your order fulfillment route means you don’t have to bear additional costs to get your products to Amazon’s fulfillment centre, incur fees for handling everything, or deal with delayed payments. Furthermore, by using MFN, you can offer personalization to your customers and establish your brand in a better way as you’ve complete control over every step of the selling process.
Still sitting on the fence and pondering over which order fulfillment method to choose? If yes, let’s try and understand this better. If you sell a relatively small number of products, then packing, shipping and handling orders can be easily managed on your own. However, if you sell hundreds of items in a day, choosing MFN won’t be a good decision. This may kill your productive hours and you may end up wasting your valuable time doing menial work that could be utilized on optimizing the product listings by seeking help from Amazon listing optimization service providers. And, if something goes awry, would you still prefer to manage it on your own (MFN) or choose to go with the experts (FBA)?
Learn How to Decide Which One Is The Best Choice for You
Let’s begin with Fulfilment by Amazon. This could be a better choice for you if:
- You have a good margin on your products and can easily bear FBA fees for getting outstanding order fulfillment service. Usually, you’ll be charged between 15-18% for FBA, so if you bear that fees and can still make a decent profit, then you must sign up.
- You want to allure more Prime members. By using Fulfilment by Amazon, you automatically qualify for making your products Prime eligible. Also, Prime-eligible sellers have higher chances of winning the Buy Box, which drives more sales and profits.
Now, let’s try to find out how Merchant Fulfilled Network could be a better choice for you:
- You want to grow your online business exactly the way you want, whether by treating your customers according to their personality, choices, and preferences or say, by using a custom packing paper. Using Merchant Fulfilled Network, you can do all this, however, with FBA, it becomes challenging because packing, shipping, and handling of products are not in your hands.
- It gives you the freedom to choose from a wide range of shipping partners. Also, you can track every shipment until it reaches your customers. However, in FBA, shipping is not under your control. Neither you get to know how much you have been charged for shipping alone. Also, if customers do not receive the product on the expected delivery date, they may leave negative reviews, which might further impact your sales and profits.
- Fulfilling orders all by yourself gives you complete authority at every stage of your business. This can make it easier for you to track your inventory and ensure on-time deliveries.
Final Words
After going through the pros and cons of both FBA and MFN, we hope you can easily decide which is the right order fulfillment option for you. Not to mention, whatever you choose, you could always use our expertise to excel and stay ahead of the competition. Connect with our experts by dropping an email to info@data4ecom.com
