Prep at home or use a prep centre?

Prep at home or use a prep centre 🤔🤔🤔

Written Emma Hamilton

The age old question! To prep at home or use an Amazon FBA Prep Centre?

What is an Amazon FBA Prep Centre?

An Amazon FBA Prep Centre, is a service provided by a company who will take delivery of your goods, prepare them in a way Amazon will accept and them ships them to Amazon for you.

Most prep centres also offer a personalised service where they will also do your Amazon shipping plans for you (tell Amazon what is in each box, the quantity and the use by date) - making the whole experience hands off.

What is prepping at home?

Prepping at home is where you take delivery of the items you have ordered or purchased. You do all the prep - whatever that may be e.g. polybagging, taping, bubble wrapping, labelling etc you then create the shipments ship them to Amazon.

Pros and cons

There are pros and cons to each option - let’s delve into some of them.

The pros of self prep is that it is cheap!

As you are doing everything yourself it is the most cost effective method especially when starting out.

Prepping yourself allows you to understand the inner working of Amazon Seller Central, you will learn how to create shipments and begin to identify the prep requirements for each product sent in Amazon.

The cons of self prep is - it takes time!!!

Prepping can be an onerous and time intensive task (top tip - maximise prep time by listening to a podcast or listening to an e-book - killing two birds with one stone and supercharging your knowledge on any area you fancy).

If you opt for self prep you will also need to source all the materials required to ship your products to Amazon - which in the beginning will be a breeze - however the more you ship the more supplies you will require. Which ultimately can take time and additional resources to source.

The majority of items we ship into Amazon we prep ourselves.

Recently we ran out of boxes and had to pick up some supplies from a local supplier - this is about one week worth of boxes which we had to pick up ourselves from the supplier.

As you scale you also need to take these extra aspects into consideration which from the outset you may not think of.

The bigger your business grows, the more benefits and cost effective a prep centre may be.

Sounds like an oxymoron right? …well give me a second.

If you prep from home, and items begin to build up and don’t get them out the door fast enough - it is actually costing you - as you are not able to recycle your investment quick enough which leads to missed opportunities.

The pros of a prep centre is that generally they provide quick turn around of your stock. Once they arrive a good prep centre, during non peak times will have your items prepped, packed and on there way to the prep centre within 48-36 hours max!!

There are even some prep centres that aim for a 24 hour turnaround - now that is impressive!!!

Using a prep centre can actually be one of the biggest expenses your reselling business will incur, however a top tip is to factor in the cost of prep when you are analysing each deal.

That way you will not to feel the effects of the costs of prep as much and begin to get used to the profits and return on investment of a deal with prep factored in.

How much does it cost to use a prep centre?

Generally the cost of prep when using a prep centre can typically range from between £0.40 - £1.00 per item prepped plus between £1.50 - £2.50 per box used.

The FBA deal analyser you opt for will generally have a tab where you can input the price of prep, therefore you can accurately account for this cost when you analyse each deal.

If you also opt for the full hands of experience - and ask your prep centre to do all your shipping plans, there will be a small fee for that also.

We have our own commercial premise where we prep from, however recently we used a prep centre during the busy Christmas period in order to get more items into Amazon.

The fee for the company to do all our shipping plans was £99 per month and the prep for us was 0.45p per unit.

Once you start shipping volume the cost for the prep centre to do your shipping plans works out to a few pence per item in order for them do the shipment creations and is WELL worth it for the time it can save you.

This essentially makes the shipping process of sending your items to Amazon completely hands off as the prep centre will not only take delivery of your products and prep them, but they will also do all the shipping creations for you.

If your goal is to be more hands off in your business, a prep centre is definitely one of the easiest and fastest ways to achieve this.

Conclusion

So, to answer the old age question…

To prep at home or us an Amazon FBA Prep Centre....

It ultimately depends on the stage of your business and what you goals are for your business.

I have worked with clients who have outsourced prep from the get go - one particular client springs to mind, as she had recently given birth and literally didn’t have the time to self prep.

I've additionally spoke with sellers who used Prep Centres as stepping stone to get themselves into a commercial premise (as there comes a point where the cost of using a prep centre overtakes the cost of getting staff and a commercial premise.)

What you really need to identify is wether you have the time to prep, or are you finding products are not getting out the door quick enough?

Is your time prepping better spent on another task in the business e.g. sourcing for products?

Another thing you also need to take into consideration is the cost of self prep vs using a prep centre.... because there is a cost for you self prepping (you are not in this business to work for free).

If you are still unsure...during your next prep session, log down the time you spend prepping and the amount of units you prepped. Then do a quick analysis and check how much a prep centre would charge you to prep those exact same items.

And in my experience if you opt for a prep centre you really need to look at those margins, you may need to slightly pivot on the products you select otherwise it may seem like you are selling on Amazon only to pay your prep bill!!!

And hey, nothing is set in stone.

You could trial prepping at home and then trial using a prep centre and analyse which works best for you and your business.

Emma Hamilton

Emma Hamilton helps people start and grow successful Amazon Businesses. She is an expert at helping people sell more using strategies that are super simple to understand implement.

If you're interested in starting your own Amazon business or scaling up and making more sales then definitely reach out and request a free strategy session today.

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