Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[legolegolego2014]

18 minutes ago, Emvisawthatswho said:

Holding some. Not sending in full amounts like previous years . Same concerns . Better to have some to fulfill than some sitting idle not moving due to Covid outbreak and warehouse shutdown .

SAH is certain to have shortages for the month of December at this rate. I'm doing mostly FBM on Amazon.

[landphieran]

16 hours ago, legolegolego2014 said:

SAH is certain to have shortages for the month of December at this rate. I'm doing mostly FBM on Amazon.

I just got notifications that I'm receiving Lego from "Lego.com Dropship". It appears the big box retailers have the ability to dropship items from SAH.

[cladner]

18 hours ago, legolegolego2014 said:

SAH is certain to have shortages for the month of December at this rate. I'm doing mostly FBM on Amazon.

i am 100% fbm this year and many listings, the lowest price FBA shows the item arriving in early January - whether or not this is accurate this is what the buyer is seeing.  starting to hit some out of the money prices on sets just because my shipping time is favorable.  so if you are selling FBM, you aren't competing on price alone, you're really starting to compete on "will my item arrive in time for holidays or not" with some of the lower priced fba sellers.  something to think about when you contemplating undercutting lowest fba to make a sale - its not necessary .

Edited November 23, 2020 by cladner

[landphieran]

5 minutes ago, cladner said:

i am 100% fbm this year and many listings, the lowest price FBA shows the item arriving in early January.  starting to hit some out of the money prices on sets just because my shipping time is favorable.  so if you are selling FBM, you aren't competing on price alone, you're really starting to compete on "will my item arrive in time for holidays or not" with some of the lower priced fba sellers.  something to think about when you contemplating undercutting lowest fba to make a sale. 

Something that people should be aware about with this approach. Don't mess around. Have the appropriate shipping boxes available. Have gluttonous amounts of shipping material. Be ready to work long hours and be ready to make emergency deliveries.

Amazon does not mess around with shipping metrics. You can receive hundreds to thousands of orders in a day. Don't get your account disabled due to being unprepared.

Edited November 23, 2020 by landphieran

[cladner]

2 minutes ago, landphieran said:

Something that people should be aware about with this approach. Don't mess around. Have the appropriate shipping boxes available. Have gluttonous amounts of shipping material. Be ready to work long hours and be ready to make emergency deliveries.

Amazon does not mess around with shipping metrics. You can receive hundreds to thousands of orders in a day. 

i have been prepacking since the beginning of October.  I have over 700 sets prepacked, taped, all they need is the rollo to spit out the label and slap it on.  should have 1000 packed  by Friday with the last big push coming up.  going to have my first five figure sales day.

Edited November 23, 2020 by cladner

[Darth_Raichu]

2 minutes ago, landphieran said:

Something that people should be aware about with this approach. Don't mess around. Have the appropriate shipping boxes available. Have gluttonous amounts of shipping material. Be ready to work long hours and be ready to make emergency deliveries.

Amazon does not mess around with shipping metrics. You can receive hundreds to thousands of orders in a day. Don't get your account disabled due to being unprepared.

Be ready to see more "I am too old for this sh1t" posts from me

[landphieran]

This is my first year with a dedicated warehouse and my partner has dedicated time to helping. We've spent about 20 hours a week for the past 5 weeks sending stuff into FBA with the last big push over the next week. Our FBA shipments are usually processed by the JOL warehouse in 2-5 days so I'm hoping the last few shipments don't get stalled. 

I'm considering switching to FBM for the stock I can't ship out by next Sunday. I'm a bit weary as individually shipping stuff introduces a lot of chaos to a normally chaotic time of purchasing and storing. The prices are VERY GOOD, so I may have to commit.

 

[Darth_Raichu]

1 hour ago, landphieran said:

This is my first year with a dedicated warehouse and my partner has dedicated time to helping. We've spent about 20 hours a week for the past 5 weeks sending stuff into FBA with the last big push over the next week. Our FBA shipments are usually processed by the JOL warehouse in 2-5 days so I'm hoping the last few shipments don't get stalled. 

I'm considering switching to FBM for the stock I can't ship out by next Sunday. I'm a bit weary as individually shipping stuff introduces a lot of chaos to a normally chaotic time of purchasing and storing. The prices are VERY GOOD, so I may have to commit.

 

FBM is completely different beast than FBA.  If selling is a video game, FBA is like fighting mid level bosses.  They are kind of tough but you can predict when they come.  On the other hand, FBM is like fighting little peons.  They are not that hard but they come in groups, wave after wave after wave.  After about 100 of those, you start questioning your choices in life.

[redcell]

28 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

FBM is completely different beast than FBA.  If selling is a video game, FBA is like fighting mid level bosses.  They are kind of tough but you can predict when they come.  On the other hand, FBM is like fighting little peons.  They are not that hard but they come in groups, wave after wave after wave.  After about 100 of those, you start questioning your choices in life.

Everytime I dip my toes back into FBM, it takes about 5 orders before I remember why I hate it.

[ichiroll]

1 hour ago, landphieran said:

This is my first year with a dedicated warehouse and my partner has dedicated time to helping. We've spent about 20 hours a week for the past 5 weeks sending stuff into FBA with the last big push over the next week. Our FBA shipments are usually processed by the JOL warehouse in 2-5 days so I'm hoping the last few shipments don't get stalled. 

I'm considering switching to FBM for the stock I can't ship out by next Sunday. I'm a bit weary as individually shipping stuff introduces a lot of chaos to a normally chaotic time of purchasing and storing. The prices are VERY GOOD, so I may have to commit.
 

Just wait until you get missed pickups due to inclement weather, or just because UPS was busy.  

if you are late because of that, Amazon doesn't care and I got my account deactivated in December because of it.

They told me I should have had a backup plan!

 

[Sozial]

3 hours ago, cladner said:

i have been prepacking since the beginning of October.  I have over 700 sets prepacked, taped, all they need is the rollo to spit out the label and slap it on.  should have 1000 packed  by Friday with the last big push coming up.  going to have my first five figure sales day.

You guys are really an inspiration, keep it up!

[gmpirate]

2 hours ago, redcell said:

Everytime I dip my toes back into FBM, it takes about 5 orders before I remember why I hate it.

This.  And its not necessarily the work, its dealing with customers when something is not scanned correctly or updated along the way.  Or I get back feedback for damaged boxes or boxes missing entirely with stickers just slapped on the retail packaging.

Edited November 23, 2020 by gmpirate

[president89]

36 minutes ago, Sozial said:

You guys are really an inspiration, keep it up!

You are gonna be pissed when someone buys more than one unit from you LOL!

2 hours ago, ichiroll said:

Just wait until you get missed pickups due to inclement weather, or just because UPS was busy.  

if you are late because of that, Amazon doesn't care and I got my account deactivated in December because of it.

They told me I should have had a backup plan!

 

yeah, know your local staples, UPS Store, Michael's (I've never use this one) pick up times. You can drop off packages there usually.

[Lego_Monsters]

2 hours ago, redcell said:

Everytime I dip my toes back into FBM, it takes about 5 orders before I remember why I hate it.

What's wrong with FBM?

[cladner]

i drop off my packages at my small town post office and ups store every day.  ups store people greet me by name and tell me to drop off my boxes behind the actual counter.  now with crazy line going out the door, i can drop off my stuff and leave, i  never wait for a receipt it always gets scanned.  fbm is a bit of a pain but  i've been doing this since March 15 so i've gotten used to it.

5 minutes ago, Lego_Monsters said:

What's wrong with FBM?

boxing, communicating with customers, taping, communicating with customers, wrapping, communicating with customers, transporting to ups or po, communicating with customers, returns, communicating with customers.,

Edited November 23, 2020 by cladner

[cobrakai]

1 minute ago, cladner said:

i drop off my packages at my small town post office and ups store every day.  ups store people greet me by name and tell me to drop off my boxes behind the actual counter.  now with crazy line going out the door, i can drop off my stuff and leave, i  never wait for a receipt it always gets scanned.  i've been doing this since March 15 so i've gotten used to it.

boxing, communicating with customers, taping, communicating with customers, wrapping, communicating with customers, transporting to ups or po, communicating with customers, returns, communicating with customers.,

My mail carrier gives me a bunch of their "potato sack" style canvas bags and I fill those up and leave them at the door.  Just print out the scan sheet from Amazon and it makes it much easier.  It only took a few trips to the post office with 100 boxes for me to figure out a better system with pickups.  Also only took my mail carrier a few days of picking up 100 boxes during peak COVID before she started leaving me bags to have ready for her.

[jbacunn]

4 minutes ago, cladner said:

i drop off my packages at my small town post office and ups store every day.  ups store people greet me by name and tell me to drop off my boxes behind the actual counter.  now with crazy line going out the door, i can drop off my stuff and leave, i  never wait for a receipt it always gets scanned.  fbm is a bit of a pain but  i've been doing this since March 15 so i've gotten used to it.

boxing, communicating with customers, taping, communicating with customers, wrapping, communicating with customers, transporting to ups or po, communicating with customers, returns, communicating with customers.,

Maybe but FBA has it's own set of problems like, oh I don't know, Amazon losing your entire shipment. 

[Lego_Monsters]

12 minutes ago, cladner said:

i drop off my packages at my small town post office and ups store every day.  ups store people greet me by name and tell me to drop off my boxes behind the actual counter.  now with crazy line going out the door, i can drop off my stuff and leave, i  never wait for a receipt it always gets scanned.  fbm is a bit of a pain but  i've been doing this since March 15 so i've gotten used to it.

boxing, communicating with customers, taping, communicating with customers, wrapping, communicating with customers, transporting to ups or po, communicating with customers, returns, communicating with customers.,

FBA lost a few of my items. Impossible to get reach of a real human to fix the issue. Even if I do get a human on the line there is NOTHING they could do to help since they can't locate or find the item. Just a waste of time getting transferred to different "supervisors". FBM you get more control but then again I probably don't ship more than 5 items a day. 

[g3man]

58 minutes ago, Lego_Monsters said:

FBA lost a few of my items. Impossible to get reach of a real human to fix the issue. Even if I do get a human on the line there is NOTHING they could do to help since they can't locate or find the item. Just a waste of time getting transferred to different "supervisors". FBM you get more control but then again I probably don't ship more than 5 items a day. 

^This is why I stick with FBM. The pain that @cladner describes is real, but it's still a refreshing change of pace from my "day job".

And the number of items normally sky-rockets this time of year making it more burdensome ... but it only lasts from mid-Nov to mid-Jan (and Mar-May 2020). The USPS directs me to drop off directly to the loading dock sorting area since I have so many boxes.

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by g3man

[Bold-Arrow]

I am doing a hybrid of both; small sets go FBA and bigger/ expensive ones FBM. the learning curve for FBM was a bit steeper than I expected (especially for some scenarios ) but between the good folks here and reading on the seller forums , it hasn't been all that bad other than other issue I am still dealing with ( item returned to Amazon DC ) . Only one buyer attempted a scam but Amazon eventually sided with me vs tens on FBA the I never saw my money back on . 

Not a big fan of communicating directly with buyers, but I have m templates handy than address 90% of the issues, so thats a big help . Like others said having a proper process ( right size boxes for example ) and good connections with you local mailing people is def a plus.  

Do I regret not going all in on FBA ? no ... will i stop using FBA ? probably not either, especially for certain items that won't make money FBM . 

[Chase.Ok]

FBA lost a few of my items. Impossible to get reach of a real human to fix the issue. Even if I do get a human on the line there is NOTHING they could do to help since they can't locate or find the item. Just a waste of time getting transferred to different "supervisors". FBM you get more control but then again I probably don't ship more than 5 items a day. 

Doesn’t Amazon reimburse you if they lose FBA item? I remember getting credit for current market price for items they could not find.

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, Chase.Ok said:

Doesn’t Amazon reimburse you if they lose FBA item? I remember getting credit for current market price for items they could not find.

it is a crap shoot now. Most times they claim that items were never sent and won't let reconcile the shipment. most of these units magically appear months later. just a sh*t show 

[Brick625]

1 minute ago, Chase.Ok said:

Doesn’t Amazon reimburse you if they lose FBA item? I remember getting credit for current market price for items they could not find.

If it shows that they received all the items.

[Bricklectic]

First time selling FBM. When Amazon gives a "ship by Monday to Tuesday" deadline for a Sunday order. Is there any ramifications metrics wise of waiting till Tuesday to ship? Aside from the risk of missing cutoff. Does same day shipping benefit you in any way?

[Bold-Arrow]

3 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

First time selling FBM. When Amazon gives a "ship by Monday to Tuesday" deadline for a Sunday order. Is there any ramifications metrics wise of waiting till Tuesday to ship? Aside from the risk of missing cutoff. Does same day shipping benefit you in any way?

Metric wise ? No