You should treat Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) as an insurance policy against stocking out during peak sales periods. Its primary growth function isn’t just providing cheap, bulk storage, but ensuring your FBA inventory is automatically and quickly replenished when it matters most.
On the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley Sutton makes the point that stocking out during a high-traffic event like a sales holiday is “brutal” for your sales velocity and product rank. AWD directly mitigates this by feeding your FBA inventory from its upstream reserve, improving your fulfillment efficiency and preventing lost sales. Will Haire expands on this during his appearance on the Amazon Legends Podcast, noting that a reliable fulfillment operation with faster shipping is key to the customer experience that helps direct-to-consumer brands grow. Looking ahead, AWD is also positioned to become a tool for multi-channel fulfillment, allowing you to replenish inventory across all your sales channels, not just Amazon.
The service isn't a simple, set-it-and-forget-it solution, however. As Dave from The EcomCrew Ecommerce Podcast explains, while AWD was introduced with low prices, its fee structure is changing, making a cost-benefit analysis essential. While it can help reduce Amazon's inbound placement fees, you have to weigh that against its own costs. There can also be operational challenges. Burak Yolga mentioned on an episode of Serious Sellers Podcast that some sellers have found the coordination between AWD and FBA to have inaccuracies.
Your first step should be to run the numbers. Model your costs to see if AWD is a net positive for your specific products, comparing its fees against your current 3PL or FBA storage costs. Factor in the savings from reduced FBA placement fees and the potential sales lift from never stocking out.