03 Nov How to set up an Amazon Vendor account

• Brands can only open a Vendor account on invitation from Amazon, which buys products in bulk from the brand and then sells them directly to end users.

• The manufacturer or distributor only publishes its articles on the marketplace, and does not care about the final prices, logistics management or shipping costs.

Although starting to sell on Amazon may seem like a simple task, the truth is that, depending on the type of account you have, it will be more or less complicated to do so successfully. It does not require the same effort or technical knowledge to sell products to the end customer using the Amazon platform to create a Seller account as it does to sell them directly to Amazon so that the company itself, and not the seller, is in charge of the whole process, as is the case with Vendor accounts. 

The Vendor account mode is aimed at suppliers and manufacturers who do not deal with the end customer, but sell their products wholesale to Amazon so that the US company itself offers them directly to its users using its platform and labelling them as items «Sold and managed by Amazon».

In this case, the sale is limited to Amazon as the distributor and this product automatically becomes Prime with all the benefits that this entails. Therefore, the Vendor does not bear the costs of shipping to the customer, nor does it have to track these same shipments. But, on the other hand, it cannot exercise any control over the selling prices of its products, nor can it have any information on the purchase conditions that are being offered to users. The Vendor must bear the costs of shipping to Amazon’s warehouses and the tracking of these shipments to the warehouses.  

Who can open a Vendor account on Amazon?

Not all brands can open an account in this mode. Access to Amazon Vendor Central is limited. It is Amazon itself who selects the sellers who can participate in it through a prior invitation that they can receive by email or telephone. Once the terms of the contract have been negotiated between the two parties, Jeff Bezos’ company is responsible for opening the account for the country that has been agreed and provides access to the control panel for the supplier.

Normally, Amazon is interested in sellers who already have a high volume of sales in their Seller mode and offers them to become a Vendor. It also does this with brands that are known, with interesting suppliers that they find through their Seller data or with manufacturers of products for which they are interested in putting their own brand, as is the case with Vendor Manufacturer.

Unlike those who open a Seller account, Vendors do not have to pay a fixed monthly fee, but only have to pay if they want to access certain services such as stock advances, premium Analytics reports or create campaigns in AMS or AMG, among others.

Once the Vendor account has been opened, the manufacturer or supplier must publish the products on the platform indicating the sale price at which it sells each item to Amazon and the recommended price for the final sale to the customer. From that moment on, the products will no longer appear directly active on the platform. There will be an approval period, which can take up to 30 days, for Amazon to analyse the demand for each of them and decide whether to buy them, order them, store them and finally sell them at the price set by its selling algorithm.

We tell you the differences between Seller accounts and Vendor accounts on Amazon so that you can evaluate which one is best suited to your business.