Reports have shown that millions of unsold products were being destroyed, calling the focus on Amazon into the public eye and leading to a new program that is designed to donate unsold products. Third-party sellers often keep their fingers on the pulse of what is happening with Amazon to be able to adapt and evolve their own businesses as quickly as possible, should that become necessary.
There’s plenty of research out there about the value of third-party sellers to the Amazon marketplace and having a knowledgeable and clear plan of how you intend to grow your Amazon FBA business can be powerful when it comes time to sell your company.
We recently published a post about some of the concerns about who gets the tax benefits of the program if you’re a current Amazon seller.
What is FBA Donations?
According to news reports about Amazon’s latest change, the new donations program will affect third party sellers who have inventory storage in UK and US Amazon warehouses. This is the default option for any Amazon FBA seller who needs to dispose of their unwanted or unsold products in those two companies. According to a documentary that aired in France last year, Amazon was believed to have destroyed over three million products in that country alone.
The launch of the Amazon FBA donation program is as a result of that documentary. Amazon is now encouraging third party sellers to step up to the plate to make better use of their unwanted or unsold products by finding a way to pass them on to charity.
This program recently launched on September 1st but sellers are led to opt out of the Amazon FBA donations program if they wish. UK charities such as New Life and Barnardo’s will be able to receive the donations of these unwanted products and a group called Good 360 will be the primary US nonprofit receiving these unwanted or unsold items.
Benefits of the Program
The primary purpose of this goal is not just to respond to the bad press about the dumping of old materials but to put otherwise wasted products to some use and to help the environment. The amount of inventory that is regularly dumped from Amazon’s warehouses is of concern especially since the French level of destruction reached over three million total products.
It is suspected that the number of products destroyed in US warehouses is much higher than the three million number from France. Amazon does charge 50c for sellers to return unsold inventory which is much higher than the 15c that is charged for disposal. Many Amazon FBA sellers decide to destroy their inventory for numerous reasons including those that are no longer safe or are no longer usable.
A spokesperson for Amazon shared that it is their goal to bring the number of destroyed products to zero including efforts through this newly established program.
Have you ever returned some of your products back to Amazon when you needed to dispose of them?