Despite the volatility of current markets, marketplaces are not seeing a big acceleration of new sellers. New data shows that competing marketplaces are unable to lure new sellers and capitalise on Amazon’s fulfilment issues.

As Amazon FBA continues to block sellers from fulfilling orders due to a lack of fulfilment support options and reduced service offerings for non-essential products, online marketplaces such as eBay are making attempts to interest new merchants through offering incentives on the seller and joining fees. However, it appears that there is no significant change in the growth of sellers or diversification of products despite this.

While there is a significant growth in sales on marketplaces such as eBay, Target and Google, users are not expanding their existing channels or creating new product offerings. It was expected that due to events such as disruptions to FBA, Amazon’s difficulties in providing sufficient support for sellers would lead to users selling on other marketplaces.

However, due to the size of Amazon, many of its most successful sellers have relied on support from FBA which makes expansion into other marketplaces difficult. Despite the lack of support or alternatives, many sellers are forced to plan around interruptions in service or adopt an independent fulfilment strategy.

Diversifying Your Approach

The initial information released from Amazon expected FBA to make a return on April 5th. The service is still unavailable to many sellers, as Amazon has relaunched with an invite-only strategy in US markets. Due to the global pandemic, many fulfilment carriers that are used by other marketplaces have also experienced issues.

The bigger issue for many sellers is the management of stock during this period. FBA stock was not removed from fulfilment centres, causing issues with stock selling without sellers being able to deliver the products. The changes in logistics have forced more sellers to establish in-house or third-party fulfilment methods or shut down their marketplace stores.

As sellers are continuously waiting for operations to resume, it can be worthwhile to investigate the possibility of migrating fulfilment systems into independent warehousing and shipping, removing the reliance on a single platform to continue operations. By opting for such a strategy, it enables sellers to expand operations into new categories, marketplaces or stores, as the systems implemented are much more flexible and able to integrate new channels.