FBM vs FBA | What Are The Differences

FBA - Fulfilled by Amazon. This fulfilment method is when you send your stock to Amazon (usually via UPS). Once you have an order, Amazon will automatically pick, pack and ship your order to the customer for you. Your products will be held at an Amazon fulfilment center until they are purchased. Amazon also deals with order queries and customer service for you when using this fulfilment service. FBA is the most scalable of all fulfilment methods as it removes all the shipping logistics, storage and customer service queries from the day-to-day running of your business.

FBM - Fulfilment by Merchant. This is where you, as a seller, fufill orders yourself. You’d hold all of your own stock, and manually ship orders via a courier direct from yourself to the customer. This method is not very scalable due to the time spent packaging and sending each individual order. Amazon also monitors this very closely to ensure you are sending orders on time; you can often come across issues with packages not arriving, which is on you rather than Amazon when doing FBA - Any issues with shipments or orders would need to be rectified by you.

SFP - Seller Fulfilled Prime. This is a programme run by Amazon to allow you to have the same fulfilment time as FBA, yet still hold and ship your own stock. With this method you’d have to use one of Amazon's approved carriers, this can be expensive.

Both FBM and SFP are heavily monitored by Amazon themselves. Any issues with late deliveries or specific orders can cause serious headaches and issues with your account. Hence, both FBM and SPF are much more time-intensive and labarious programmes compared to their FBA counterpart.

For the most part, we will be focussing our time and attention to Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)