How to Sell Small Items on Amazon: 6 Steps to Success

Selling small, inexpensive items on Amazon brings profitability challenges. We can take you through ways to leverage Amazons programme specifically for small and light items. If you have any questions on how this programme can work for your business, our consultants will be happy to advise you, so please do get in touch.

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Step 1: Check the eligibility of your items

The Amazon FBA Small and Light programme can help Sellers fulfil fast moving, small and low priced ASINs. By using this programme, you can benefit from educed fees for the fulfilment of small and large letter sized ASINs relative to regular FBA.

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First, check your items are eligible. Your items must meet the following requirements.

1. Are smaller than 30 x 22.4 x 2.4cm (including product packaging)
2. Are priced under £9
3. Have sold more than 30 units in the last 30 days
4. Must not be Hazmat

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The below products are not eligible:

1. Adult products
2. FSK18 or USK18 products
3. E-cigarettes or related products (whether or not they contain nicotine)
4. Hazardous products, including items that contain lithium batteries or magnetised material (for more information, refer to the Dangerous goods identification guide (hazmat))
5. Products that require sign-on delivery or other age verification process
6. emperature-sensitive products (such as chocolates) during May 1 to October 14 due to the summer break for products containing chocolate

1. Products with existing FBA offers that use manufacturer barcodes for tracking instead of Amazon barcodes (see step 2)

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If you ship in any items which do not meet the strict size criteria they will not be received and you will need to create a removal order at your own expense (£0.26 per unit).

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Step 2: Make sure your Account is set to ‘uncommingled’

It is not possible to use the Amazon FBA Small and Light programme in tandem with the commingling programme. To check that commingling is turned off in your account, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings
2. Click on Fulfilment by Amazon
3. Check that FBA Barcode Preferences are switched to Amazon barcode.

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Ensuring commingling is switched off prevents any errors appearing when enrolling SKUs into SnL.

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Step 3: Choose to fulfil the SKU to via SnL or enrol the existing SKU

If you want to enrol you existing SKU, skip to step 4. To duplicate your SKU, you can follow either of the following options.

For up 1-5 SKUs

1. Go to Manage Inventory
2. On each SKU you want to duplicate select the up or down arrow to the right of the ‘Edit’ button.
3. Select ‘Add a condition’
4. Complete the details giving the SKU a different name to the original.

Tip: We recommend starting the new one ’SNL_’ to make it really easily identifiable as a Small and Light SKU.

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For 5+ SKUs

For 5+ SKUs use an Inventory Loader file to duplicate your SKUs in bulk. Complete it as follows (leave all other columns blank):

Spreadsheet column:

• A (sku): Put in your new SKU name (we recommend you start it with 'SnL_')
• B (product-id): The ASIN
• C (product-id-type): 1
• D (price): The price you want to set for the ASIN
• G (item-condition): 11
• M (fulfillment-centre-id): AMAZON_EU
• Q batteries_required: False
• AE - AI (supplier_declared, all columns): Not Applicable

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Save as a .csv file and upload it here, and choose File Type as 'Inventory Loader File'

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Step 4: Enrol your SKUs into the SnL programme

On the SnL enrolment page you can use the Quick enrol function to quickly enrol up to 100 SKUs into the SnL programme. Enrolling into the SnL programme is done at by SKU and not ASIN level. This means it is possible to have a merchant fulfilled SKU and SnL SKU for the same ASIN.

Alternatively, if you want to enrol more than 100 SKUs, you can complete up to 50,000 by following these steps:

1. Download the enrolment template
2. Complete column A on the Upload tab with the SKUs you want to enrol (make sure they exactly match the SKU name in Manage Inventory with no extra spaces etc)
3. Save the file as a .csv file type
4. Upload it in Step 2 on the enrolment page.

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Step 5: Prepare your products for SnL

Unlike regular FBA, Small and light inventory does not need to be individually labelled. To save time and cost, you can pack all units of the same ASIN into a clear bag and put an FBA (FNSKU) label on the outside of the bag. You should write the quantity of the units inside the bag next to the label.

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Step 6: Create FBA shipment as normal

All small and light enrolled SKUs will be directed to SnL fulfilment centres. These usually start with EUK… or LTN4. If any SKUs are being directed to any other fulfilment centres, it is likely the SKU was not enrolled into the programme. If this happens, you should and therefore retry step 4 and check the Review enrolment status report. There may have been errors that have prevented it from being enrolled.

You can see any SnL enrolled SKUs and the amount for stock in SnL inventory report here.

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How to dis-enrol SKUs from the SnL programme

As long as you don’t have any inventory in a fulfilment centre, you can dis-enrol SKUs from the Small and Light programme by following these steps.

1. Go to the disenrolment page
2. You can a. use the quick disenroll tool or b. download the Disenroll template.
3. If you opt for option b - complete the SKUs you want to disenrol
4. Save the template as a .csv file type
5. Upload the file in to Step 2 on the dis-enrolment page.

The SKUs will now be a regular FBA SKUs.

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Amazon Prime

All ASINs enrolled in the SnL programme are Prime Eligible, so shipping is included for Prime customers. The non-Prime shipping fee for customers is £0.99 per unit. This is lower than the £3.99 non-Prime regular FBA shipping fee. The delivery promise is a Two Day promise which is slightly slower than the One Day promise compared to regular FBA. For this reason, the Prime Badge does not appear on the listing detail page itself but the Prime filter (which looks exactly like the Prime Badge) appears on the ASIN in search results and in the ‘more buying options’ view.

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Conclusion

In 2016 Amazon created the FBA Small and Light (SnL) programme to help Sellers fulfil fast moving, small and low priced ASINs. The programme offers reduced fees for the fulfilment of small and large letter sized ASINs relative to regular FBA.

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Step 1: Make sure your items are eligible

Step 2:  Ensure your Account is set to ‘uncommingled’

Step 3: Choose to fulfil the SKU to via SnL or enrol the existing SKU

Step 4: Enrol your SKUs into the SnL programme

Step 5: Prepare your products for SnL

Step 6: Create FBA shipment as normal

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Additional Useful Information

List of Adult products

Seller Central: Fulfilment by Amazon

Inventory Loader file

Small and light enrolment page

Small and Light inventory report

Amazon Small and Light dis-enrolment page

SnL Disenroll template

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If you have any questions on how this programme can work for your business, our consultants will be happy to advise you, so please do get in touch.

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