Having an Amazon Vendor account means that Amazon purchases your products and sells them in a «sold and fulfilled by Amazon» mode.
Having an Amazon Vendor account means that Amazon buys your products and sells them in «sold and managed by Amazon» mode. The opening of a Vendor account is done under «invitation from Amazon», so it depends on Amazon’s interest in your products.
If you have already opened a Vendor account, you will probably have noticed that the management and above all the service levels required by Amazon are very high.
Being an Amazon supplier sounds interesting, and in fact, the business potential is huge, but the management, returns, invoicing, shipping… can make it difficult to achieve the expected profitability. Nozama can help you as we have 9 years of experience in managing Amazon Vendor accounts.
Find out below how Nozama can help you manage your Amazon sales as a Vendor. You will have to take into account: the contract with Amazon, catalogue publication, positioning, promotions, order management, confirmations, product preparation as required by Amazon, shipping, booking in Amazon’s warehouses, and management of non-delivery charges, preparation, timing, as well as managing invoicing with Amazon. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
At Nozama we have created a team of people suited for each task, find out more below.
Management of contracts with Amazon
Once the conditions of the Vendor contract with Amazon have been negotiated, it is important to be able to properly comply with Amazon’s conditions. At Nozama we will help you to manage this contract, ensuring that the agreed conditions are met so that the profitability of the sales operation is fulfilled according to your expectations. We can also advise you before signing the contract on the profitability of your products, so that you have all the information you need to know if Vendor is the best option for your company.
If you wish Nozama to sell your products directly to Amazon, we can also help you. If you don’t want to worry about all the management and you want to have a digital distributor on Amazon, Nozama buys your products and will take care of the whole process for you.
As an Amazon Vendor, you have to comply with a series of conditions and contracts pre-established by the marketplace.
Our experience has helped us manage and deal with all these kind of contracts.
When the account is open: Set it up
Once we activate the account we will take care of its setup. We will add all the necessary information: payment information (bank account details, payment methods), company information (identification details, registered office, public name, etc.), shipping and returns information (addresses, shipping preferences…) and general tax information.
At Nozama we also carry out the tax configuration (intra-community VAT number and VAT calculation configuration where we define the type of VAT system), and we can enable or disable, depending on your preferences, the platform to automatically generate invoices for your customers.
Our team also takes care of the setup of the shipping template, both national and international: delivery times, shipping costs, shipping locations.
When the account is open: Publishing
The next steps will be the creation of the catalogue, the activation of the catalogue with prices and then, start selling! But keep in mind that you will be competing with a product catalogue with more than 100 million different products, so SEO and SEM promotion will be essential for the success of the sale.
The creation of products on Vendor is not the same as on Seller, in fact, Amazon uses different creation templates. At Nozama, we are experts on the creation of the Vendor catalogue as we have managed more than 1 500 different templates in the past years.
Before creating your products, we will do an audit of your account and products. Whether you have already created them or not, we will carry out a market study of products similar to yours to analyse the competition, sales levels and keywords used (keyword research). After this audit, we will present the results to you to help you decide on the best strategy for publishing your products.
SEO on Amazon, that great unknown
The publication strategy will analyse the publication structure of your product texts, analysing the title, the bullet points (or key characteristics of the products) and the description included. We will also take into account a price recommendation after having analysed the competitor.
You need to bear in mind that the SEO positioning is very important for the product in order to be a 10/10 in the eyes of Amazon’s A9 algorithm and to be ranked higher in customer searches. That’s why we carry out the keyword audit and compose the texts with professional content writers, but don’t forget that photographs are key to purchase conversion. If you don’t have photos of your products (and we recommend at least 7 per product), we can take them in our professional photography studio.
We also have a professional video creation service available for you, both for product sheets and to promote your company.
We work to give you visibility in all countries
Don’t forget that the Amazon market is global, so our team of native speakers from different countries will translate your products into the other languages (without any additional cost) and, of course, we will repeat the product audit in each country to analyse the keywords used and translate the texts appropriately. Each market is different, so the analysis and publication work must be repeated in each country. This country audit also includes the study of the competition and positioning of each type of product including giving you an estimate of the sales made by the top sellers in the categories where your products are published. This «estimate» of the market volume of each product is very useful to analyse which markets and types of products can be more profitable so that we can decide where to invest more, for example in advertising.
Yes, it sounds complicated and laborious to execute but you can count on us to carry out the whole study and publication. From our part, there is no additional cost for us to carry out the study, for example in the 5 European countries, as we consider that this is the only way to ensure the right steps to achieve sales.
A + content, Brand Stores, does that sound familiar to you?
The basic product publication includes «title», «bullet points» and «description». But this is not everything! Amazon allows the creation of extended content known as «A+ pages», so we will create A+ pages for your main products.
In addition, if your brand is registered by you, or you are an authorised distributor and the brand authorises you, Amazon allows the creation of so-called Brand Stores, which are basically a mini-store or mini-site of your brand inside Amazon.
Yes, you got that right! You will have your own shop inside Amazon! Even with your own shop entry URL (for example, https://www.amazon.es/your-brand). We will take care of creating and running it for you.
And once everything is ready, Monitoring and Management of your account
We have been working as Amazon Vendor for almost a decade. To do so in a profitable way we have created a team of experts, our own methodology and software tools that help along the process.
Our experience in our own Vendor Accounts has allowed us to create the appropriate processes (work methodology) and to keep up with them on a daily basis in order to adapt to Amazon’s requirements. All this experience, equipment and tools are at your disposal.
To properly manage a Vendor account, you will need to be aware of how Amazon releases POs (Purchase orders), to confirm or reject them in the timeframe they require. Orders can be First Order or Back Order, and will have different delivery deadlines. They can also come from any of Amazon’s warehouses (Fulfillment Centers). Confirmation must be adjusted because you may be charged Chargebacks if you do not ship all confirmed orders.
Amazon Policy. We guide you throughout the process
Once orders are accepted, it is important that they are shipped within the Delivery Window that is included in the PO. In addition, you must ensure that the items you ship comply with the preparation policies that Amazon requires for each item (it is important that you keep up to date with these preparation policies, because they change over time and Amazon usually applies financial charges if they are not complied with).
Once the product is packaged (it is important that the Vendor complies with the SSCC code, as it facilitates the reception by Amazon and avoids delays), it is important that the transport to Amazon’s Fulfillment Center is carried out by a transport company that is familiar with Amazon’s delivery policies. Prior to delivery, you must make sure that the transport company has confirmed the delivery time (booking) and that they will transport the product as Amazon requires. Otherwise, the product will not be received or the delivery will be refused, which will result in financial charges for non-delivery in addition to losing the sale.
When the product has been shipped to Amazon, it is time to issue the invoice to Amazon. Amazon may apply charges for non-delivery (chargebacks for non-readiness, or Shortage claims if not all confirmed units are received), it may also apply Debit Notes to adjust the payment to the products received according to the agreements made in the contract (for example, marketing contributions among others).
We solve your incidents with Amazon
If you believe there is a problem or mistake in Amazon’s invoicing (invoice versus charges, deliveries, contract contributions…), you will have to file a complaint to claim the differences and follow the «Claim» process established by Amazon.
Yes, it is a process that you have to be aware of and dedicate resources to follow on a daily basis. Otherwise, the procedure will probably not be profitable.
Nozama has built up a team and software tools that simplify the whole process.
Our team will review the Purchase Orders and pass them to your ERP or internal stock control system (automation is possible) and ensure that they are confirmed and shipped on time. We will then track the shipment with the transport company ensuring that the booking is done on time and the product is delivered within the delivery Window and prepared the way Amazon requires. For all of this we have a dedicated Tracking, Logistics, Shipping, Invoicing and Claims team who will carry out the whole process for you.
