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SEATTLE – Under Amazon’s newly announced logistics expansion, sellers can move their products from Amazon’s warehouses to any of their other sales channels – including their own physical stores and warehouses unaffiliated with Amazon – instead of only to consumers’ doors.
Supply Chain by Amazon, announced at Amazon’s annual seller conference this week, is an end-to-end, fully automated set of services that sellers can use to move their products anywhere. Amazon will pick up inventory from manufacturing facilities around the world, ship it across borders, handle customs clearance and ground transportation, replenish inventory and handle final delivery.
The service essentially allows sellers to restock all their sales and fulfillment channels from a single pool of inventory.
“Our vision has always been to make it as easy as possible for sellers to serve customers around the world, and providing our selling partners with a simple, fast, cost-effective solution to a challenge that has become increasingly unpredictable and complex is an important investment in sellers’ success,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon vice president of WW Selling Partner Services.
“With Supply Chain by Amazon, Amazon will pick up sellers’ inventory directly from their factory and manage the supply chain logistics through delivery to customers’ doorsteps,” he continued. “Sellers will be able to offload even more of the complexity of their supply chain logistics to Amazon, both for the products they sell in Amazon’s store and through other sales channels including online and physical store locations.”
The service is currently in test-phase and limited to an initial set of sellers. It is expected to be available to all sellers later this year, the retailer said.
The move comes as competing companies step up their e-commerce fulfillment capabilities, including Walmart, Shopify and Flexport.
