Azimuth Articles Wholesale Amazon FBA Program (Beta)
The simplest way to start selling online (and on Amazon).
If you’re looking for a way to get your start selling online that’s both affordable and scalable, you’ve already considered selling on Amazon. You may have considered retail arbitrage, dropshipping, private label or white label, becoming an authorized reseller for an existing brand, or even developing a new product from scratch.
Trick is, and you may have figured this out already, retail arbitrage presents an unreliable supply chain that’s difficult to scale, dropshipping means you can't use FBA, so you miss out on Prime customers and risk nasty reviews when shipments are late (not a great idea if you want to build a winning seller account on Amazon, and let's not get started on import hassles and expenses), private/white label risks being lost in a sea of millions of generic products (or expect to burn boatloads of cash you may not have on advertising playing a pay-to-play game while trying to survive on paper thin, even negative margins), most brands won’t allow selling on Amazon or require a brick and mortar store (either way, once again, you’re looking at big bucks to get started), and the most expensive option of all is developing your own product from scratch (not to mention time consuming, we’ve done it and it can take years).
What makes this different from all the other noise?
Rather than focusing on building an Amazon monopoly for our brands, we’ve decided to pursue a more cooperative model that allows us to share the enormous expense of fully stocking inventory with Amazon on 100s (and soon to be 1000s) of SKUs or risk stocking out on best sellers only to see our sales rank drop. The best strategy for success on Amazon is to keep your products in stock so you don't lose hard won sales velocity and best sellers rank, which is where you come in. Keeping in stock is best done as a team effort (a right-sized team effort, more on that later). And the best way to get started selling online is to find a brand that will let you sell on Amazon, which is where we come in.
We’ve done all the hard work for you. We’ve already spent over 10 years vetting suppliers and have built relationships with excellent pricing and buying power, we've created and are continuing to grow a catalog of original products protected by copyright that are branded and trademarked, registered with Amazon Brands, ready and live on Amazon with all photography, A+ content, Vine reviews, and initial advertising complete. These products are a ready and waiting turnkey online business for aspiring Amazon sellers (we will ship product straight to Amazon, and they'll automatically go live as soon as they're received and process by FBA).
How it Works
All you have to do is sign up, make a $99 deposit on your first order to activate your account (the deposit will appear as a $99 credit towards your first order), and provide your account rep with permissions to access your Amazon FBA shipping account. If you do not already have an Amazon account, you will need to set one up, and if you're not selling in your own name you'll need to organize a business (which we can also help you with) but you don't need to build a website, create a logo, or go into debt chucking cash on ads that don't work, patents, trademarks, legal fees, or big MOQs (our MOQs always start at a single case, we offer an optional opt-in advertising program, and we can also help you get set up to sell on your own website if/when you're ready but you definitely don't need to).
When you place an order, we will generate shipping labels within your Amazon FBA account, batch your order with other wholesale orders to offer the best volume discounts, and your products will be shipped directly to your FBA account. We also take care of all of the advertising and offer a dollar-for-dollar ad match up to 10% of your order value (you fund $100 of ads, we add another $100, doubling your ad power, and we set up a custom designed CPC campaign for you).
The Catch!
What’s the catch? Yes, there's is a catch! It’s the time it takes to place and produce custom orders in batches, which means it can take a minute to produce, ship, and receive orders, usually 6-12 weeks depending on scale of order, time of year, and how long Amazon takes to process all of your inventory. Next, to provide ongoing support from a dedicated account manager, there is a $99 monthly subscription "fee" but this is again a deposit on orders (you're only out of pocket if you don't place any orders, these fees acure as credits in your account if unused and never expire but you are limited to one $99 credit per $999 of order value).
So, no, it’s not the fastest way to get started but it probably is the cheapest and easiest way to get started selling online, especially on Amazon, with a unique product selection all of which offer differentiators that can’t be copied by competitors. We also limit the number of sellers on each ASIN, strictly enforce MAP pricing (we will announce sales everyone can participate in, otherwise violating MAP to gain a Buy Box advantage will result in that sellers account being permanently revoked). Again, this is a cooperative wholesale program, not a cutthroat competition or an "opportunity" that's really a race to the bottom.
We also only sell our own products on Amazon when there is low inventory (our number one mutual goal is keeping products in stock at all times, so we will step in and stock ASINs with low inventory but as soon as there are enough sellers to ensure an ASIN will remain in stock for 2-3 months, we will let our inventory stock out and stop offering that ASIN to other wholesalers, leaving each seller to pick up sales based on the sale velocity we build together, and the location where your inventory is stored (based on the time your inventory is received it will go to different fulfillment centers with lowest stock, giving each seller a somewhat random advantage based on where your inventory lands and where customers are located as Amazon will award the Buy Box to the seller with the closest inventory when all else is equal (and again, you won't be competing with a never-ending parade of other sellers, there's a hard cap to make sure we're neither under-stocked or overstocked).
You'll also be among the first so while that could be a catch, it could also be a ground-floor thing, and while our beta wholesale program isn't guaranteed to become a permanent wholesale program, we do see this as an investement we're making in each other, so any wholesalers who apply and sell will be guaranteed to retain wholesale buying rights for any ASIN they stock, even if the wholesale program closes to new applicaitons.
Have questions? Interested in applying? Just send us an email and talk to a real live USA based account manager: