How does Amazon Sales Central work?

Online merchants who decide to retail their products on Amazon have to choose between Amazon vendor central and Amazon seller central. How do these centrals serve and which factors can affect your choice? These questions I am going to answer in this short post. We will cover the difference between vendor central and seller central and discuss the primary benefits of both. Hopefully, this information will help you to understand which option works best for your business.

Amazon Sales Central vs Amazon Vendor Central

There are only two options how you can sell products on Amazon trading platform - as the vendor (in other words as the first-party seller) and as the retailer ( a third-party partner). Amazon works differently with first- and third-party sellers. To understand these difference you should first understand how to distinguish between vendors and retailers. 

As the first-party seller, you will use Vendor Central as either a distributor or a manufacturer. As a vendor, you retail your products in bulk to Amazon, and Amazon, in turn, retails these stuff under its brand name to customers. In this case, Amazon receives a percentage of the sales. However, by this program, all shipping and delivery cases are assumed by Amazon. The items which are provided by Vendor Central partners can be distinguished by the label “Ships from and sold by Amazon.” 

As the third-party seller, you should use Amazon Sales Central. Moreover, as a retailer, you can use Amazon Sellers Fulfillment (FBA). It is very convenient because according to this program, Amazon ships all your orders by itself. Alternatively, you can handle all shipping processes by yourself.

Pros and cons of Amazon Sales Central and Vendor Central

Online merchants who would like to spend a minimum on Amazon services will satisfy with Amazon Seller Central. It also will provide you with an opportunity to set minimum prices for your products and stay competitive within your niche. Another benefit is that you can set whatever price you think relevant to your products. It means that if you would like to promote the idea of quality, you can easily do it. 

Amazon claims that it will prize any minimum advertised price requests. However, those merchants who use Vendor Central can argue this statement because in reality Amazon rarely does so. 

According to Amazon ranking principals, any other seller’s prices should be matched. It means that as soon as someone notifies Amazon about the lower price on a particular product outside this platform, the cost of the product will drop. It is complicated to get Amazon to raise the price back to the MAP. 

If compared with Vendor Central, Seller Central partners have more control over pricing. However, for those who are looking for a good partnership with Amazon, Vendor Central provides more opportunities. 

If we talk about listing optimization, Amazon Seller Central provides higher flexibility. You can easily change titles, make corrections to bullet points and descriptions as well as update your images. 

To conclude, I would like to say that I prefer to use Amazon Sales Central as it provides more benefits and support. Moreover, I have constant access to a Seller Support service.