These days people don't even wan to box it up. They contact the manufacturer and ask them to ship the item direct to Amazon, on their behalf. And they complain when they don't get a big enough discount…
But it gets even worse. They will send you a spreadsheet and ask you to fill it out… with all the information Amazon needs so that it's easier for them to upload into Seller Central.
And in the event of damage or customer service? They tell the customer to reach out to the manufacturer.
90% of Amazon sellers are just leeches. You can pretty easily make money doing it though. A lot of manufacturers still aren't savvy to the game. I had a company that literally had "Arbitrage" in their name reach out to me the other day.
For many manufacturers, a great deal of their sales come from distributors (the great majority of retail is still brick and mortar).
They can't compete with their customers. Many manufacturers have started selling direct as well, but they usually sell at a bit of a premium to avoid undercutting their own customers.
It's just bad form to do that. And large retailers like Walmart will usually stipulate that you can't sell it cheaper direct.
I think the main reason is that Amazon won’t buy their items at a reasonable price due to what I can only call “price corruption”.
Basically, third party sellers find a way to get a wholesale discount and then sell it through Amazon for a bit more. So the price on Amazon is artificially low. Say you have a $10 item. Maybe your wholesale price is $5. The third party seller puts it on Amazon for $7. Amazon sees this. Now Amazon only agrees to pay you $4, because to them the $10 price is irrelevant. $4 is too low, so you don’t accept and Amazon doesn’t buy from you.
Now, you can sell yourself on Amazon, but then existing retail partners get mad because suddenly you are selling the item for $5 to compete with the arbitragers. I’ve even found some relatively large retailers selling on Amazon under dummy companies to hide their name, but still be able to profit off their high wholesale discount.
Things are changing. But it can be a slow and painful process for small manufacturers.
But it gets even worse. They will send you a spreadsheet and ask you to fill it out… with all the information Amazon needs so that it's easier for them to upload into Seller Central.
And in the event of damage or customer service? They tell the customer to reach out to the manufacturer.
90% of Amazon sellers are just leeches. You can pretty easily make money doing it though. A lot of manufacturers still aren't savvy to the game. I had a company that literally had "Arbitrage" in their name reach out to me the other day.