Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) and its Advantages

If you’ve been selling on Amazon and decided to start selling from your own website, using Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) to fulfill your website orders is your best option.

What is Amazon MCF?

Amazon MCF is a program that fulfills customer orders across multiple sales channels. With MCF, you can use your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) inventory to fulfill customer orders from other sales channels—including your own website.

This program offers lower direct-to-consumer fulfillment costs, fast and reliable delivery, discounts on multi-unit orders, streamlined fulfillment process across multiple platforms, fully trackable orders, etc. Also, with MCF, you don’t have to store inventory in a 3PL warehouse, which saves you money, and inventory management will be more efficient.

Is there a downside?

That goes without saying–MCF fees are considerably higher than FBA fees. However, if you are selling via your own website and using Amazon MCF, the 15% referral fee that Amazon normally charges sellers doesn’t apply to you. Another downside–keeping all your inventory in Amazon fulfillment centers can be risky but not if you’re just starting out. Once your inventory level has increased significantly, then that’s the time to diversify and look for a 3PL partner to minimize risks.

When is the best time to use MCF?

• When you have excess inventory in Amazon that you want to liquidate by running a clearance sale on your website

• When you’re about to launch a new product to your existing customer database

• When you need to send free products to influencers or offer product replacements to customers

• When you’re doing a Kickstarter Campaign and you have physical products to be shipped to your campaign backers

How to connect your Amazon seller account with your website?

For Shopify, there’s the Amazon MCF app that you can download from the Shopify App Store. It’s free to use but it’s only available to integrate with Amazon US marketplace. Another app I’ve tried for Amazon UK and EU marketplaces is the Amazon MCF by Bytestand. There’s free trial available then the monthly subscription starts at $25. From experience, setting up this app is a bit more challenging but their customer support is responsive which helped me a lot.

For Woocommerce, I only found the Amazon Fulfillment (MCF) for WooCommerce plugin but I haven’t tried it yet. Once I do, I will update this post so stick around.

Got questions? Drop a comment or send me an email.