Greg has sold on Amazon for about 2 ½ years now so he has quite a bit of experience with selling. Greg saw an opportunity while he was selling. He hated doing the prep work. It took a lot of time and kept him away from what actually made him money, sourcing and working with suppliers. So he started FBA Prep UK almost two years ago as a solution for Amazon sellers.

Why bother with prep at all? Why not just send directly from China or supplier to Amazon?

First of all, things happen to products. It’s more common with air, there’s a lot more handling and a lot more opportunity for packaging to be damaged. From the supplier not doing what their supposed to, then sending it to the plane, loading and unloading from the plane, then to the Amazon warehouse.

Sometimes the products show up without packaging. It may have been repackaged by the shipping company because it was in such bad shape. Amazon won’t accept that. They have very high standards for what they expect and if it arrives damaged, they will not accept it. It will either be removed or destroyed.

To avoid all this, you’ll want the products to be inspected before they go to the warehouse. You can do this yourself but you will soon realize how much time and effort it takes to go through everything.

So what prep do you need to do for Amazon?

Obviously, everything will have to have a scan-able barcode, i.e. EAN or UPC work fine. Most products that come from China do so in a poly-bad or a plain white box with no identification on it. Amazon cannot accept that. They are a massive operation that cannot deviate from their processes. Prep companies, being smaller and working with you directly, have the flexibility to ensure the products are packaged correctly before Amazon gets them.

For the items that come in the poly-bag, can you repack those?

These bags are quite brittle and are too thin so they don’t meet Amazon standards. They have to be sealed or they have to have a suffocation warning label is the opening is more than 5 ½ inches. These aren’t Chinese regulations, so unless you specifiably request this, it won’t be done. Sometimes it won’t happen if you do specify it. Keep in mind that your supplier is likely not to comply with your instructions. There is very little chance of getting your money back should they mess up. Typically the only recourse is a discount on your next shipment.

If you hire an inspection company and everything checks out at the factory, what are some other things that can go wrong?

If it’s in a poly-bag, it’s pretty much ok. The problem starts if you have it in a box that gets thrown in to a shipping container. By sea is better because there is less handling. It doesn’t get handled much until it arrives gets put on a pallet.

Greg recommends contacting the supplier and having them ship extra boxes. Many times some of them will get hit by a forklift and the packaging gets messed up which will be rejected by Amazon. The products are fine but because the box is messed up it becomes unsaleable. If you don’t have extra boxes you have to contact the supplier after the fact. The supplier will likely not send you the extras until your next shipment which leaves you with 10-15% of your products sitting around until you’re ready to order again.

Greg’s standards are whether or not he would be happy to receive it. If he order an item off Amazon, would he be happy to receive it in that condition? If not, he would send it in until it gets repacked. This is also to protect you. Amazon shoppers are picky. They will rate a product low based on the packaging. Even if the product is great but the packaging was awful, they might leave a poor review. So it’s worth it to wait to send it in rather than risk a poor review.