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Comment by Judson | Hacker News Reader

Turns out, Amazon has a program called Seller Fulfilled Prime. Sellers get the prime badge, and ship from their own warehouse.

If I had to guess, the seller tells Amazon where the product is located + their shipping cutoff time, and if the customer is in a geographic location that is serviced by UPS/FedEx/USPS from the seller's warehouse with 2-day transit time, and it's before the seller's cutoff, the Prime badge is shown.

More information here: https://services.amazon.com/services/seller-fulfilled-prime....

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So the sellers in this case don't even get a cut of the $119/yr Prime fees?

If that's the case why would the sellers even offer Prime shipping? Why not offer free 2-day shipping to everyone, including those who aren't Prime members as well?

> So the sellers in this case don't even get a cut of the $119/yr Prime fees?

That isn't mentioned in the linked Amazon information so my guess is no.

> [...] why would the sellers even offer Prime shipping? Why not offer free 2-day shipping to everyone[...]

FTA: "Your products listed with Seller Fulfilled Prime have increased chances to win the Buy Box. Winning the Buy Box means that when customers click on “Add to Basket”, their default option is to buy the product from you."

Also mentions that SFP is really for special case products. The called out reasons include:

- High-value items

- Products with seasonal or unpredictable demand

- Items with variations

- Slow-moving goods

- Inventory that requires special handling or preparation

Can confirm, it's all about the buy box. My company offers free 1 and 2 day shipping to all customers across all channels in as many zips as our fc network allows. SFP gets us the buy box with a way higher percentage and gives us a significant boost in our Amazon revenue.

In addition to a higher chance to win the buy box (the default add to cart action), there is a search filter for "Prime offers only" (it's literally the very first search facet filter on the left nav), and many customers have the belief that Prime means a higher certainty of delivery timing.

Seller fulfilled prime is a program that could be quite lucrative for sellers who qualify.

No, but as a seller, you pay the Amazon fulfillment fees whether the customer is Prime or not. It doesn't affect your fees.

If you are seller fulfilled prime, then you are not paying Amazon for fulfillment. Just the 15% cut they take and then you pay to ship it yourself.

It works out better for you if you have the scale to get cheaper rates than fba gives you (which include storage fees, freight to get the item to a warehouse, etc.)

> If you are seller fulfilled prime, then you are not paying Amazon for fulfillment.

That's where my question comes from.

If you're seller fulfilled prime, you're eating the cost of 2-day free shipping without a cut of the $119/yr prime membership fee. Then why would you offer 2-day free shipping only to prime members? It doesn't make sense. Why not offer 2-day free shipping to everyone including those who are not prime members?

Dropshipping maybe. My team deployed the first Prime-enabled Dropship vendor in germany back the day. Not aware of any marketplace Prime sellers. But than it was quite a while ago and in Europe, so that isn't saying a lot.

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