How will my supply chain impact Amazon Prime Day?
What’s Prime Day for Amazon?
Amazon holds a huge e-commerce celebration for Prime members every July, with large discounts around their platform on a variety of items.
When is the Prime Day of Amazon?
Prime Day 2019 is expected to be mid-July 2019, but it will not be confirmed officially until closer to that date.
How does the importers affect Amazon Prime Day?
We begin to see a significant increase in the volume of goods sent to Amazon FBA warehouses several weeks before Prime Day. This can lead to delays and additional charges, depending on the volume of your deliveries, to get your goods to FBA in time for Prime Day.
Problem: Amazon warehouses need timetables for delivery. With goods coming in before Prime Day, it becomes more difficult to get these appointments— particularly for floor-loaded (unpalletized) FCL deliveries, because they take much longer to unload.
Solution: Prepare for delays and plan ahead. We can transload and palletize your cargo, then secure a palletized cargo delivery appointment (these appointments are easier to get), but note that Amazon appointments in general will be more difficult to secure.
Problem: LTL prices for Amazon are small, but their truckers are stretched pretty thin before Prime Day. If you are using Amazon LTL, you may have to wait for shipment of your products for up to 3 weeks.
Solution: Consider other last-mile delivery options so that a quick cost-benefit analysis can be performed.Prime Freight can arrange Amazon’s trucking with a 7-day delivery. It will cost more than Amazon LTL, but it’s about 14 days faster as well. (Ask for a quote from your Prime Freight team!) Note that Prime Freight delivery may still be postponed due to the lack of available delivery rates.
Problem: Amazon’s warehouse staff work to unload trucks as quickly as possible, but truckers often wind up waiting in a long line before it’s their turn to pull up the dock. This can lead to delays and waiting fees for trucking.
Solution: This is not something that can be controlled, unfortunately. Last year, we obtained images from some of our trucking partners showing extreme congestion in various FBA warehouses (we spoke to truckers standing in those lines for 10 hours!).
How do I stop these problems?
You might not be able to put it clearly. Nonetheless, we recommend the following in addition to the specific suggestions mentioned above: ensure that all cartons are properly labelled at their source. It will cost extra time and money if this needs to be done, or repaired, at the destination.
If you haven’t already done so, make sure your Prime Freight team has the ability in your Seller Central account to view / edit shipment plans.
If you have an urgent delivery to an Amazon FBA warehouse, let your Prime Freight team know ASAP. We can therefore give and implement solutions like those mentioned above.