SFP, is that you?

Amazon is going to be reopening its Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP) enrollment later this year, which will allow for sellers to handle the fulfillment of their inventory to the customers on their own (and, importantly, maintaining the Prime badge for fast and free delivery).

SFP was first launched in 2015, but since has been deemed by many experts to be an Amazon “swing and a miss” for lacking in customer experience and seller compliance on shipping metrics.

For example, the program mandates that sellers much ship over 99% of orders on time, have nationwide delivery coverage, and have weekend pickups and delivery.

All that made SFP popular for a niche group of sellers who found it cheaper to use their own or third-party fulfillment centers.

As of late, the SFP program has been closed to new applicants to “address issues with customer expectations and provide better support for sellers.”

Some are saying that this step by Amazon is seen as a way to expand its Prime service while freeing up FC warehouse space post-Covid.

Small and Light is Dead

Last week on June 29th, Amazon announced that they are ending the Small and Light program.

Small and Light was an Amazon FBA program designed to cut fulfillment costs for products that were…you guessed it, Small and Light.

More specifically, products had to check these three boxes:

• Weighing 3 pounds or less
• Measuring 18 x 14 x 8 in dimensional inches (or less)
• And be priced at $12 or under

Amazon is replacing S&L with new “Low-Price FBA rates” which will still save sellers money compared to larger size, weight, and priced items…but not to the same extent.

What sellers loved about S&L is that offered a reduced fulfillment fee, thus incentivizing wholesale sellers to carry such inventory and Private Label sellers to consider manufacturing it.

Many sellers felt that without S&L incentives, the same products would be rendered unprofitable under standard fulfillment costs.

No one is celebrating the new FBA rates for low-price products which average $0.77 lower per item than current FBA fulfillment rates.  That’s because that rate is $0.30 more than under the previous Small and Light program.

Zooming out, this change feels all-too-reminiscent to many sellers of the theme: Amazon will always deliver the lowest price to its customers, but often times at the expense of the sellers…too bad that a company with $513.983 billion in revenue can’t seem to find room to help its third party sellers out!

Seems like you can’t go anywhere online without the people talking about how ChatGPT is the next big thing. I think these are the same folks who were buying LUNA and saying that “NFT’s are here to stay” just a year or two ago. Quite frankly, I’d like to press *MUTE* on all that chatter and get back to work.

That is, UNTIL I saw some of my favorite Amazon software using AI to create new listings or optimize existing ones…in seconds!

Jon Tilley, Co-Founder and CEO of ZonGuru, debuted their tool’s ChatGPT enabled listing creator at the recent Convert More Clicks summit. It blew my mind.  

With just a few clicks, you can use your competitor’s ASIN’s as the foundation for a listing. Use their Keywords on Fire tool to upload the relevant keywords from 5 competitor ASINs and then a single click gets a complete AI Generated listing in 30 seconds.

If that sounds too good to be true, wait until you further optimize the listing by adding/subtracting keywords and asking the AI to regenerate the listing…you can raise your Optimization Score and create a better listing than the Page One results for your search term.

SmartScout’s version is called AI Listing Architect and it will take an ASIN and spit out Product Title, Keywords, Bullet Points for the listing, and a Description.

It only takes a quick “copy + paste” of your competitor’s ASIN to get a listing started.  From there, all you need to do is finesse it a bit – that’s how Tilley describes the process of re-humanizing the AI’s recommendation.

If you’re skeptical of how easy I’m making this sound, I get it. Watch Scott Needham, SmartScout Founder and CEO, create a listing in under one minute. Better yet, try AI Listing Architect for FREE and no credit card down with code: SMARTAI

Kudos to SmartScout and ZonGuru. Helium10 and Jungle Scout, we’re watching you…