Amazon's Prime Pantry is a new service that allows Prime members to order enough "qualifying" grocery items to fill a specific size shipping box, with the shipping cost of $5.99 regardless of the number of items or the weight. Some current Amazon sellers and others interested in venturing into the grocery niche have expressed concern about how Amazon Prime Pantry will affect their sales. From my observation, it won't. Here's why:
1. According to the program description, qualifying items are "not cost effective to ship on their own." When browsing the qualifying items, I noticed that many products are large or heavy items priced under $15 like large jugs of detergent, 12-count boxes of soft drinks or sports drinks, 16-pound bags of pet food, and 14-pound plastic jugs of cat litter. I wouldn't recommend the typical "at-home" Amazon FBA seller offer these types of items anyway because they aren't profitable and the inbound shipping and storage fees would not be cost effective. Plus, who wants to handle big heavy items all day long when you can sell smaller lightweight items for much higher profit?
2. The other side of "qualifying items are not cost effective to ship in their own" is that many qualifying items are Add-Ons, selling for less than $10. Again, something I wouldn't recommend for the average at-home FBA seller because the profit isn't there, and Add-Ons can sit for a long time before they sell.
3. Qualifying items are only a tiny fraction of the 665,000 items in the grocery category. Here is how many qualifying items are available in each subcategory right now:
4. All of the items I clicked on are only offered by Amazon.com, not third party sellers. My observation is that these are products that we don't (or wouldn't) offer anyway and Amazon is testing out a new creative way to move cheap products in a more cost effective way. For example, what self-respecting FBA seller is going to bother with one can of soup sold for $1.88? Or a 12-pack of Diet Coke for $3.64? Or a box of toothpicks for 85 cents?
So grocery sellers, don't despair. There is still plenty of opportunity for everyone because we all have access to different regional products and so many new grocery items hit the shelves each year it is physically impossible to buy and resell everything with an opportunity. (Like this Snow Cone cookie mix - I mean really? Who comes up with this stuff?)
The grocery category is unique in that sellers can often find a product in their area that no one else is selling, or bundle items in a unique way, and sell those items for months or even years with no competition. Just figure it out and keep replenishing every week. Not many other categories offer that benefit.
Check out my downloadable Amazon Grocery Course which is focused on:
Understanding how to sell products with very little competition
Understanding demographics and buying habits of Amazon grocery customers so you can serve them better with more products
How to test products before making significant investments in inventory
The types of products that are easiest to work with, sell the best over time, and are most cost effective with regard to inbound and outbound shipping
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