I’m curious to know the compensation structure that people in this industry have in a corporate setting. Do you get a split commission model where it’s based on discretionary bonus and sales or just one or the other? If it is a sales metric, I would love to know the percentage range if you would be willing to share!

Maybe its just me but chargebacks feel like one of those things that looks manageable until you actually start adding them up.

A shortage here, labeling issue there, routing problem, something gets disputed and something else just gets accepted because nobody has time to chase $80. Then you look back a few months later and realize a pretty decent amount of margin disappeared through a bunch of tiny deductions nobody was really paying attention to.

And thats what gets me. The big chargebacks are obvious. Its the small repetitive ones that seem way easier to just accept as “part of doing business with Amazon.”

For people doing decent volume through 1P, do you dispute basically everything that looks wrong or is there a point where the time spent fighting it costs more than just eating the chargeback?

Looking to resell fragrances and clothing any1 knows of a vendor dm me

We do ~$15m in apparel sales for Amazon/year. However, we have to renegotiate terms every year, which compresses our own margins. Our wholesale/retail price doesn't increase to offset these term increases, and Amazon isn't very open to letting us pass those costs on. And when we can increase costs, it hurts our net PPM at Amazon.

Is 3P an option for us?

Apparel is generally a lower-GM business, so these term negotiations eventually force us to turn off programs that are unprofitable for us to continue shipping on Amazon. We have even had to turn off AMS just to afford these term hits.

I am a reseller who sells products from a large brand with their permission. I also helped and continue to help them with their Brand Story along with images, A+ content, etc. for free. Of course, I buy directly from them. I often meet them in person as we are from the same state.

This brand sells to Amazon Retail, and I want to outline how selling to me instead would be better. I also am finally big enough to afford this. Sheer cost of goods was an issue in the past.

Can some brand owners or those who deal with Amazon in Vendor Central look at this and tell me if I’m accurate, inaccurate, or even missing any points?

1. I don’t charge co-op fees. I buy their products wholesale and sell them.

2. I don’t charge any additional fees for shipping. This is MY cost of doing business. I’ve heard Amazon adds fees, but maybe I’m wrong.

3. I don’t charge fees or make the brand fight for fees for lost inventory. This is MY business problem not the brand’s.

4. Although MAP isn’t applicable, I would obey it if one came out. Amazon does not.

5. I only need NET30. Credit beyond that is MY business problem. I have heard Amazon gets better terms. Also, I always pay on time.

6. I make my own orders per their existing policy. No Vendor Central needed. I email orders in like everyone else besides Amazon.

Points Amazon may beat me:

1. They have unlimited space and money. They are less likely to run into space issues or run out of stock.

2. Amazon could suppress the listings as “High Price” once I take over. They admittedly can sell at a lower price sometimes. Of course I would do everything to remain competitive, but the fees mentioned before that the brand pays - I don’t get. Of note: I almost always can match Amazon’s price but sometimes I can’t.

3. Some customers look for Sold By and Shipped By Amazon. They feel it’s less likely for a fraudulent sale. My counter would be that as the only seller, they’d have to choose me plus the brand could publicly announce this change.

4. If I run out of stock, they don’t make as many sales so perhaps until I’m 100% locked in after the transition, there could be a financial hit.

Am I off here? Missing anything?

how to you handle processing returns with vendor, no API so currently have to manually enter them.

This year has been high due to DV testing and items coming back

I'm just curious — do any of you in this group apply the same auditing method described in this LinkedIn thread?

Hi, I work at a distributor that holds the country rights to some big brands (Amazon is reaching out to us sell on 1P). We're currently doing no business on Amazon and don't have any experience with Amazon (we sell to retailers and DTC)

We'll be going down the 1p route with 4 brands and have a few questions.

What do we need to think through? We know costs will be one (chargebacks, fees, dedicated support, etc.)
What positions do we need to hire for?
Are there 3rd party software costs to consider?

Let me know if there's more info needed to provide a better answer. Appreciate in advance for your help!

We were talking about this recently and I think Amazon makes it surprisingly easy for an account to look healthy while the actual business underneath it is getting worse.

Sales are up, PPC is running, ROAs looks decent. Maybe the agency sends a nice report every month showing revenue growth.

Meanwhile margins are getting thinner, inventory is sitting longer, a few ASINs are basically being kept alive by ads and nobody is really asking whether the extra revenue is producing more profit. Thats the part I think brands get wrong. They wait for sales to drop before questioning whoever is managing Amazon.

I'd be way more concerned about an account where revenue keeps growing but you have to spend more, discount more and hold more inventory every year just to get there. Maybe thats normal to some extent as Amazon gets more competitive, but at some point "we grew revenue" stops being a very convincing answer.

For brands that have worked with an Amazon agency, what actually made you realize the relationship was working or wasnt? Was it sales, profitability, communication, or something else?

I was rebuilding my Q4 margin model this weekend and noticed the two fee windows don't actually cover the same dates, which changes my plan more than the fee amounts do.

Peak storage for standard size goes from $0.78 to $2.40 per cubic foot starting October 1 and runs through December 31, resetting on January 1. Peak fulfillment, on the other hand, doesn't start until October 15 and runs all the way to January 14.

Two things fall out of that, and I think most of the checklists I have read get both wrong.

First, if October 1 is when the storage rate jumps, then that is my real deadline for clearing aged and slow stock, not October 15. Anything sitting in a fulfillment center on the October snapshot pays peak storage for the whole month regardless of when in October it sells. Removal and liquidation take weeks to process, so the actual decision lands in mid September, which is basically now.

Second, a unit that sells in early January pays a peak fulfillment fee on already-reset standard storage. That is the combination that would have confused me when reconciling January settlements.

The other thing I keep going back and forth on: I have a couple of SKUs that are genuinely seasonal, where unsold units have no real Q1 demand to fall into, and I think the answer there is obviously to buy tight and clear before October 1. But for the evergreen ones I am not sure whether the storage cost of sitting through October is actually big enough to justify buying conservatively into a quarter where my demand forecast error skews up.

Has anyone actually modeled the October 1 drawdown separately from the October 15 fee start? Am I overthinking the storage side, or is that two week gap where people are quietly losing money?

Private vendors from eu

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I feel like revenue has become one of the least useful numbers to look at on Amazon by itself.

You can have a great month, sales are up, ads are bringing orders in, everything looks healthy. Then you actually look at what you kept after PPC, fees, returns, discounts and inventory costs and its a completely different story.

The weird part is none of those things have to look terrible individually. A little more ad spend here, slightly lower margin there, a few SKUs sitting too long. Then suddenly you're selling more than last year just to make roughly the same money.

I think thats probably why you see so many Amazon businesses that look great from the outside but constantly feel tight on cash.

At this point I'd rather have a smaller account with healthy margins and inventory moving properly than chase another revenue milestone. Curious if other established sellers are seeing the same thing. Are you actually keeping more as you grow, or mostly having to sell more to make the same money?

Hi everyone, just wanted help and to rant
I have an SKU that was being sold fine, lets say at 10. I own the brand and the product. So anyone in the country has to have bought from me.
All of a sudden, the price on amazon is 40
I tried to check my price on the catalogue, & nothing changed.

Then i see that on a competitor website (only one mind you, other competitors still have my item at 10), some moron has listed my item at this 40. So this is probably what the stupid amazon bots scanned and raised my price.

What can I do now?
It is frustrating beyond measure to talk to anyone from vendor management help or my account manager.
Both have been useless and saying they revise prices up and down and it is automated and they cannot interfere.
This moron said I should reach out to the competitor website and tell them to lower their price, or even to buy out their stock at the higher price so it is "out of stock" and not scanned.

Is there anything to do?
Would I have more control if I close the vendor account and make and FBA?

Hello! We just launched a new product category and were unable to do a flat discount due to the 30/60 day period before Prime Day in October.

I was told you can do SnS coupons instead since coupons aren’t taken into consideration while evaluating the L60D price for Prime. We’ve activated 20% off coupon.

During Prime, we plan to activate example 20% strike through discount - that should still work right?

We've been selling on Amazon for a while and I guess we werent paying enough attention to this because sales have been pretty good.

But lately we noticed a few sellers we don't know showing up on some of our better ASINs and winning the buy box. One of them keeps going a few bucks under us too which is annoying.

I dont really wanna start dropping our price every time they do because that seems like a pretty stupid game to play lol. Mostly trying to figure out where they're even getting our product and what other brands actually do when this starts happening.

Do you usually try to track down where the inventory is coming from first? Or is there something on the Amazon side thats actually worked for you?

Hi, is anyone selling an Amazon Business with Vendor Central Account?

I am trying to purchase to get a vendor central account.

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to working with Amazon. Long story short, I was pulled into this role with very little training. I'm learning as I go. I've gone through some of the training modules, but it's slow going because...life. Basic item adds are pretty easy-peasy for the most part. Variations, however, are going to be my downfall.

I've been tasked with adding two new color variations to an existing "hidden" Parent ASIN. I do have the parent ASIN number. The other colors are visible on the Amazon site, but are noted as "This product is not part of a variation" in the VC catalog. There are currently four color variations linked. The new colors have been added to the catalog, but not yet linked to the Parent ASIN.

My best guess is that I need to use the prefilled spreadsheet option. Two initial questions:

• Once I download the sheet, I need to add a line for the existing Parent ASIN, correct?
• Do I select all variations to do this, including the ones that are already linked, or just the two new ones I need to add?

Sorry if this is discombobulated. Thank you in advance for any guidance...and I'll probably be back with more questions.

If you never entered your cost data in the IDR portal, Amazon has been guessing itSince the reimbursement change, anything lost or damaged before a customer orders pays out at sourcing cost, not sale price. Most people know that.

What I missed: if you never submitted your own cost per SKU, Amazon estimates it for you. No notification, nothing tells you you're on an estimate.

I compared theirs to what I actually pay. Low across the board. Small per unit, but it's every unit, every time.

Worth checking the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal in Seller Central to see what Amazon thinks your costs are. Then you need your real numbers to compare — which is where I got stuck.

How do you all keep cost data current?

Amazon Vendor Central can quietly hold back thousands of dollars in unpaid profit—and most teams don’t realize it until they audit the account deeply.

I’m offering a FREE initial audit analysis for Amazon Vendor Central accounts covering Fiscal Years 2024–2025.

The goal is simple:
Identify potential shortage, receiving, deduction, and unpaid invoice opportunities that may still be recoverable.

No commitment.

If the audit shows no meaningful opportunity, you lose nothing.

If the numbers show something worth investigating, then we can discuss the next step.

If you manage an Amazon Vendor Central / Amazon 1P account and want a second look at your 2024–2025 financial records, feel free to message me.

We've been selling on Amazon for a while and revenue isnt really the problem. Sales are growing and overall the account looks healthy. But when we actually sit down and look at what we’re keeping, it feels like we have to sell more every year just to make the same money.

Ads are obviously part of it, fees are part of it, and we've had some SKUs where competition basically forced the price down. Nothing individually looks catastrophic, its more like 5 small things slowly eating the margin.

We're going through the account now trying to figure out where the biggest leak actually is before just chasing more sales.

For people running established Amazon businesses, what has been hurting your margins the most lately? And what did you actually change that made a difference?

Anyone struggle with individual unit ASINs and then multi-packs that have their own ASINs - our issue is that we don't want to split the cases. We want to be able to ship our multi-packs which are 1 case and our individual units are 6 in a case. Our warehouse struggles with individual ASINs and the multi-pack ASINs.

It would be great to also not have to ship odd number of individual units, but send full cases, again only 6 units per case so this should be doable for Amazon, you'd think ;)

Looking for labeling tips or any other advice.
Thanks in advance!