Question
Can we sell products on Amazon?
Answer
Our integration with Amazon is only a "beta" today and isn't an officially supported program from Modern Retail. We don't mind adding you to this program but there's some things you should know about it.
We call it a beta program because while it is well, we still have two things to accomplish:
- PRODUCT EXCEPTIONS
Amazon is a very difficult integration. Amazon is not only picky about the feed format but also “how” products are added to Amazon. They work off a “first product wins” model. This approach accepts the first product entered by a retailer and forces every other retailer to follow the lead of the first retailer. This has huge ramifications because Amazon actually rejects products if they don’t exactly match what was entered by the first retailer. For example if another retailer entered a shoe as turquoise, and got in first, you would have to follow their lead and change the color to turquoise – even though you know the shoe is blue! If you don’t change the shoe to turquoise it won’t show up in Amazon. I know a little crazy!
We have developed some technology that will automatically change some of these attributes for you - yes with no intervention - but others will require your input or they will not show up in Amazon.
- ORDER TO POS SYSTEM
You will be able to see you Amazon orders directly in Store Manager. Meaning, as you fulfill orders in Amazon they automatically flow down to Store Manager and show up as orders. The next logic step is to automatically decrement the inventory in Store Manager and send the order down to your POS system. This is not yet done.
COST
The cost for the Amazon integration has not been determined at this time. Some customers have wondered if the cost would include or be greater than the 2% transaction fee that's being charged. While we cannot say for sure, we believe the costs will be below the 2% transaction fee because these transactions are actually happening on Amazon's servers and not ours. Of course there's a costs associated with developing and maintaining the integration with Amazon, not to mention the on-going bandwidth charges, but we're hoping these fees will be less so we can make the Amazon integration as enticing as possible.
NEXT STEPS
We need you to sign up with Amazon and send us the email address and password you used with your Amazon account. You can sign up with Amazon here:
www.amazonservices.com/content/sell-on-amazon.htm
Please submit a Support Request in Store Manager with your credentials and we'll get your integration started. Thank you.