Context: Small business that has been around for 40 years selling parts out of a brick and mortar location, and 4 years ago started an online store with great success. Leaving type of parts ambiguous, but think RV/ATV/Marine type stuff.

We’ve noticed costs from domestic suppliers for basic products go up substantially in the past 4 years, so for this coming season we’ve secured a line of lower cost/better value parts from overseas. We plan to re-brand to our own brand name and offer support/parts, and we can charge 80-100% markup on these and still be incredibly competitive with existing name brands.

When comparing our planned pricing to Amazon listings for comparable products, we are set up to be very competitive. We also have the advantage of warehousing in Canada alongside Amazon so we can offer quick shipping, and play into the Canada-ism in our branding.

The internal battle in my head is that we are trying to push our brand and online store, where we keep 100% of the revenue from. But it’s undeniable the impact Amazon has on the market.

We are wondering if it would be worth it to order additional stock to list on Amazon and compete against the other sellers with our value products. I have no experience selling online, and while it must be worth it with all the people doing it, it also wouldn’t be worth it for Amazon if there weren’t some gotchas. So I guess I am wondering

  • What are the average fees that it costs to list product on Amazon?

  • Does anyone else in a similar position have any experience with this?

  • And much broader, would it be worth it for us to list these products on Amazon?

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

  • ThatCanadianGuy88@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is my experience and others may vary. I am located in Canada

    No. When I tried to dip our companies toes into Amazon the numbers did not make sense. There was only a flat like $6 allowed for shipping costs. Yet my minimum cost to ship was about $18 at the time. So I had to add a further $12 minimum to the sell price. Which kept us competitive price wise. But the second I got orders that were a little further away the cost to ship would jump and it would chew away the profit.

    Add in the products I had on there are a bit niche and 95% of the sales were at Xmas it really was not worth the headache so I shut it down. Hindsight it was the correct move because now there are several main sellers doing the same products and they are doing it WAY cheaper than I ever could. Im not even sure how they manage to sell that cheap as their cost cant be any cheaper than mine is.