20/10/2022
Why a prep center?
If you source and ship Amazon FBA inventory from your home, you know the problem:
Inventory in the garage.Inventory in the car. Inventory in the hallway. Inventory on the living room table. Inventory in the guest bedroom. Inventory anywhere you can find space to store it while you wait to get it ready and shipped to an Amazon warehouse.
It can be a bit overwhelming for both you and your family, especially during Q4 when sourcing and shipping is at its peak for the year. During Q4, the workload can be so challenging for an Amazon FBA seller that we end up missing opportunities because we end up spending more time than we should on tasks that could easily be outsourced to someone else.
Preparing, packing, and shipping inventory is one of the most obvious ways you can outsource tasks in your FBA business, so you can free up your time to do more of what makes your business successful: making great sourcing decisions and finding profitable inventory to sell on Amazon.
You can hire someone to prepare, list, pack, and ship for you, either in your home or in a small warehouse. But what if you don’t like someone coming to your home to work? Or if you don’t want to bother renting a work space outside your home? What if you’re not sure how to schedule hours for an employee? What if you’re not sure if you have enough work to keep an employee busy? Or what about the opposite – what if you have a ton of work to do, but can’t find someone trustworthy to do it?
If you want to eliminate dealing with these questions, you might consider working with a prep center. The physical actions required to prepare, list, and ship your inventory are really just one aspect of dealing with your inventory on a regular basis.
You also need to consider these aspects:
Bringing inventory into your home/warehouse
Keeping inventory in your home/warehouse
Buying and storing plastic bags,etc.
Buy and store shipping boxes, packing tape, labels,etc.
Buy hundreds of boxes of different sizes
Imagine what it would be like to run an FBA business without having inventory in your home. Imagine what it would be like not having to worry about keeping inventory in stock or maintaining a workstation with all the equipment and supplies for preparation and shipping.
What is a preparation center?
A preparation center is a service that will receive your inventory, inspect your inventory, prepare your inventory for Amazon, and then ship your inventory to Amazon. A prep center can be used to deliver your retail arbitrage if you can find one locally, or you can use a prep center to receive online arbitrage and wholesale deliveries throughout the United States.
Benefits of using a preparation center
1. More time for other activities
Less stress caused by inventory moving in and out of your home/warehouse
Less stress caused by having to maintain shipping and preparation of supplies in the warehouse
2 .Potentially faster
With a prep center, I can source, source, source, and someone else is sending my inventory to FBA warehouses faster than I was able to do it on my own. Many prep centers have a 24-48 hour turnaround, which can be crucial for time-sensitive inventory and getting fast sales to increase your disbursements.
3 . More Freedom
Freedom is a huge reason to outsource any task, especially when it comes to removing the work and stress associated with preparing and shipping inventory from your home. Using a preparation center gives you the freedom to work on more profitable tasks – and the freedom to use your time and space in your home as you wish.
Saving time is crucial to the long-term success of your FBA business, and using a Prep center can help you make real progress.
