Amazon MCF: The Easiest Way To Fulfill Shopify Orders — Cara Hefty | What Is Amazon Multi-channel Fulfillment, Why Social Commerce Drives Growth, How Automation Boosts Multi-channel Sales, Why Virtual Bundles Raise Order Value, How Bytestand Works (#421)

In this episode, we explore Amazon's multi-channel fulfillment service and how it helps Shopify merchants use their existing Amazon inventory to ship orders from multiple sales channels. 

Cara Hefty from ByteStand explains how this automated system works, covering everything from inventory management to shipping rules, social commerce integration, and cost-effective fulfillment strategies that can boost both your Shopify sales and Amazon rankings. 

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• What is Amazon MCF. 
• Why MCF simplifies fulfillment for Shopify sellers. 
• How automation boosts multi-channel efficiency. 
• What makes ByteStand ideal for Shopify-Amazon sync. 
• Why virtual bundles help boost order value. 
• How shipping rules cut fulfillment costs. 
• Why order delay features prevent fulfillment issues. 
• How auto-tracking improves customer experience. 
• Why social commerce is key for growth. 
• How ByteStand makes onboarding fast and easy. 
• What makes ByteStand’s pricing clear and fair. 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://bytestand.com/
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/fba-shipping
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bytestand

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://tinyurl.com/4k8twsmm

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Transcript

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:20:22
Unknown
Social commerce and social ordering is a big thing. Customers see something and you want that impulse kind of buyers. They see it. It's exciting. Click two buttons, take my money and ship the item. I want to talk a little bit about the shipping rules. How does that work? This is a good question. So shipping rolls is something that.

00:00:21:00 - 00:00:46:01
Unknown
Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Shipping Orders is one of the biggest headaches for Shopify merchants. If you're already using Amazon FBA to store and ship your products, you're probably wonder how to make that work smoothly with your Shopify sales too. That's where Amazon's multichannel fulfillment comes in short and see. And today we're digging into what it is, what it can do, and how it can help your business.

00:00:46:04 - 00:01:05:01
Unknown
To help us unpack this, I'm joined by Cara. She's the face of Bytstand and she guides merchants through using Amazon Mschf on Shopify with hands on support, demos, tutorials and so on. And she makes sure that every user feels confident in using it. So we have a lot to cover. Let's jump right into it and welcome to the show.

00:01:05:03 - 00:01:39:19
Unknown
Hi, how are you today? Good. How are you doing? Very well. Great to have you on the show. So first question for our listeners who haven't heard about it, what's Amazon's multichannel fulfillment? Yeah, so multichannel fulfillment is an Amazon owned software or service for Amazon established merchants. So for merchants that have already shipped their products into an Amazon facility and store their products in there, they're probably participating and the FBA are fulfilled by Amazon service already.

00:01:39:21 - 00:02:17:23
Unknown
Well, MTF is a free service that was introduced by Amazon way back in 2007, but it just started to gain traction and recently probably within the past 6 to 7 years. So MTF enabled merchants back in 2007 to manage only create external orders in the back end of Amazon so merchants could accept orders in person on Shopify by different platforms, but then they would have to type in customer addresses, select the products, calculate the shipping rates and create orders in the back into Amazon.

00:02:17:23 - 00:02:51:06
Unknown
And because it was a non Amazon.com order, they said, okay, well this is now called Multichannel fulfillment is coming from a different channel. We'll go ahead because you we have your inventory stored in our warehouses across the globe. We'll go ahead and pick, pack and ship this for you. And Amazon did that as a way to keep merchants from exploring with other three peoples and as a convenience like your products already stored with us, you're selling on Amazon, you're making money, your brand is gaining traction.

00:02:51:07 - 00:03:13:16
Unknown
If you have a different website or start storefront, great. But it was manual at that time. So now things have progressed to a more automated solution now that they've gained traction with us, where merchants are finding ways to automatically forward orders from all different platforms into Amazon's back end and have these things picked, packed and shipped for them.

00:03:13:19 - 00:03:35:18
Unknown
Mm hmm. I remember the times when I was running my Shopify store and I had to do it manually and Amazon was a complete pain in the neck, to be honest. So it's great that there is a solution to automate this whole process. Now, I won't have you talking me through the process because there's a lot of data coming in, so there's inventory and then obviously there's a couple of marketing opportunities in there with your app.

00:03:35:18 - 00:04:26:18
Unknown
What you can do, and I want to dive into this, but just talk me into how does the connection work between Shopify and Amazon. So the connection between Shopify and Amazon, there's not an organic one that exists right now. So with the Shopify App Store, you have apps that exist like Bytedance, which is the company that I work for So Biased and has created an app called S.F. Shipping Merchants with a Shopify store can install and integration connector app like Bite Stand, and within two clicks we collect your Amazon credentials from Amazon seller Central and that is MTF is currently available to United States, Mexico, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Australia and Japan.

00:04:26:18 - 00:04:53:06
Unknown
So far it's questionable on India. So if I have listeners that service India customers, they're working on it. So bias and within two clicks gathers your Amazon credentials, imports them into stand and that's how we connect your order and inventory information from Amazon into Shopify. With that, you've got a couple of options. Everyone's number one goals order fulfillment.

00:04:53:11 - 00:05:29:17
Unknown
But the second runner up is inventory management. So Amazon considers your FBA inventory one pull of inventory. And so with MTF orders, they pull that inventory from your FBA inventory so you don't have to fetch physical pulls for MTF and an FBA, it's on one pull. So if you run out of inventory of a product in an Amazon warehouse at the positive, one of the perks of apps like and as we also sync your inventory for you from Amazon into Shopify.

00:05:29:19 - 00:05:56:02
Unknown
So if you go out of stock of a product in the middle of the night, you're on holiday and Amazon, when Bytedance syncs that inventory, we pull the inventory over to Shopify for you. So it says out of stock over in Shopify and you're not collecting orders for out of stock products. So with an integrator integration app, there's just a couple of clicks set up that we automatically send order data to Amazon.

00:05:56:02 - 00:06:20:13
Unknown
When Amazon ships orders, we collect the tracking information, import it back into Shopify. It's a completely automated system that also prevents a lot of human error with managing inventory, keeping it mapped from Amazon to Shopify, especially for our merchants of hundreds to thousands of SKUs. You're not going to be able to keep up with what is in stock, what is out of stock, what orders have shipped and what hasn't Shopify.

00:06:20:14 - 00:06:37:18
Unknown
I think it's a huge advantage that you can stay in Shopify and still have an overview of what's happening in your warehouse. Now, a lot of stores nowadays they have some kind of marketing strategies to increase your average order volume that might be bundles of, might be subscriptions, upsell and so on and so forth. How do you deal with this?

00:06:37:20 - 00:07:01:15
Unknown
Yeah, that's a good question. So Byte Stand currently has a couple of different options. We have a virtual bundle option. The positive is that we have a lot of merchants. I'd say, Hey, I have packaged all of these units separately. I don't actually have the bundles built in an Amazon warehouse floor, but I need to sell them on Shopify or on Tik-tok as a shampoo and conditioner and a dry shampoo.

00:07:01:17 - 00:07:29:12
Unknown
So we have a very simple feature that you just map the product list, the product listing on Shopify, that SKU to its physical Amazon SKUs. So when we send that order over to Amazon, we say, Hey, ship three different SKUs, not don't go look for this fake SKU that actually doesn't exist. So that helps our merchants easily create these bundled products without having to create something and seller central because that can be difficult from time to time.

00:07:29:13 - 00:07:59:11
Unknown
The bias in app is also very flexible and it works with the upsell apps that are out there and subscription apps. So a lot of e-commerce or Shopify merchants are familiar with things like recharge or an app like Miracle where they're actually selling products because now social commerce and social ordering is a big thing. Tick Tock has exploded lately because customers see something and you want that impulse kind of buyers.

00:07:59:11 - 00:08:24:18
Unknown
They see it, it's exciting. Click two buttons, take my money and ship the item. So Byte Stand works with Shopify and these other apps that when merchants are importing orders into Shopify, we're forwarding all of those orders over to Amazon. Amazon is not sure if it's coming from Tick Tock, Shopify, eBay. They're just saying, Here's an order and I'm shipping it for you with their super fast standard and expedited options.

00:08:24:20 - 00:08:55:15
Unknown
So people that are very marketing savvy and focusing on that, you can do subscription upsells, social orders, virtual bundles, everything is covered. Hey, know, that's great. I mean, that's really covers basically the whole marketing strategy that a lot of stores have right now, specifically when it comes to social selling. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the shipping rules because a lot of sellers might have different shipping routes or even different shipping rates depending from where they sell from.

00:08:55:17 - 00:09:28:05
Unknown
How does that work? So shipping rolls is something that bites and has introduced recently. We're really excited about it because the world of e-commerce is getting more and more complex because our customers want they want more, they want a custom experience, they want it faster and they want it cheaper. So our merchants have to adjust for that. So with bites and we started to sense this change and shipping rules help merchants, small and large, that maybe they don't want to ship every single order from Amazon.

00:09:28:06 - 00:09:53:12
Unknown
So for my merchants that are familiar with Amazon, it is cost effective for them to ship orders from Amazon with one unit in it. But when it's a multi-unit order, that shipping cost for the merchant can start to add up. So shipping rules, you could create a rule that says send all Shopify orders. I have one unit in it to Amazon and ignore orders.

00:09:53:12 - 00:10:12:07
Unknown
I have multiple units in it and I'll ship that for my three people because it's more cost effective. Or if you're a merchant that ships oddly shaped products or heavy products, you don't have to. You can use a shipping rule that says, Hey, if someone attempts to purchase this SKU, I'm going to ship it from my North Carolina warehouse.

00:10:12:09 - 00:10:37:09
Unknown
You can control your shipping cost two ways, specifically with the byte stand app and one is to offer your own manual fixed rate. Everyone in Shopify can control their own shipping costs in their Shopify settings, and so we'll just map those to the standard and expedited options that Amazon offers in the back end if you want to use your own manual fixed rate.

00:10:37:14 - 00:10:56:23
Unknown
So for example, my merchants that sell in the United States and the U.K., they might want to offer free shipping over in the U.K., I think they're shipping costs from what we have seen as a little bit more manageable than some of the U.S. costs. So let's say I'm going to offer U.K. customers free shipping by its end, but charge U.S. customers.

00:10:57:01 - 00:11:26:21
Unknown
And so we help with that flexibility. And then the other option we have is live Amazon shipping rates. So for our store merchants, our Shopify merchants that are on a gross Shopify plan or above, they have access to live Amazon calculated rates. So in real time as their customers are checking out in different countries, as long as those products are stocked in an Amazon warehouse, we're connecting with Amazon and sending Amazon the SKU and the shipping address and saying, Hey, Amazon, what will it cost to ship this?

00:11:26:23 - 00:11:45:15
Unknown
So whatever the merchant is going to pay for shipping costs via Amazon, the customer's paying it for them. It helps a lot in the risky business of miscalculating shipping costs and making a loss on the shipping, which happens to a lot of merchants out there. And it's not an easy task. So if this gets automatically calculated in a back end, that's perfect.

00:11:45:17 - 00:12:10:17
Unknown
Now, sometimes sellers don't want to send out the order immediately. They want to check they might be canceling it for some reasons or whatever, or make changes to it. Is there any kind of way to bring this into the workflow? There is. So within the Bikes and app, we have a order delay feature and I'll take a step back and say, number one, the merchant has flexibility.

00:12:10:17 - 00:12:36:18
Unknown
There are some merchants that would like to look at every order before they send them to Amazon. And if that's the case, don't turn automatic fulfillment on. And you can choose per product even these days with shipping. So maybe you want to automatically ship some products, but not all of them. So we have a lot of merchants, 89% of them turn automatic fisherman on and get everything sent to Amazon within 8 minutes of the order being created.

00:12:36:20 - 00:12:59:08
Unknown
There are other merchants that say, I would like a delay, so now you can create the limit is 5 minutes. So the shortest delay you can create is 5 minutes up to 48 hours. You can delay sending orders automatically to Amazon. So this helps with fraudulent orders or it helps with orders where the customer needs to cancel the order.

00:12:59:08 - 00:13:16:15
Unknown
They shifted to the wrong address. Or maybe they need to add something to the order. And happens quite often that is in a pass that people will order and 5 minutes later you get an email is I have the wrong address in there. So you're literally you want to wait sometimes depending what your audience is, it's exact. Yeah.

00:13:16:17 - 00:13:38:02
Unknown
Tracking is probably the number one question that comes to supports. Where's my tracking code? People want to have it in the confirmation email. How do you deal with this? Yeah. So the good thing with Amazon, when merchants are using their own safe program, you're getting access to the FBA shipping timeframes. So standard shipping is added. I'll speak for the United States.

00:13:38:04 - 00:14:00:21
Unknown
We have more information on the website and on MTF about each individual country because there's different shipping time frames for standard versus expedited. But these days their expedited shipping option is just as fast as priority and expedited is cheaper than priority. So with those options comes the tracking link. Amazon will provide the tracking information even for a multi shipments.

00:14:00:23 - 00:14:28:11
Unknown
So if it's one order with multiple shipments, they will provide us with all the tracking information. We pull that from Amazon imported into the Shopify order and then we trigger Shopify to send automatic emails to the customer. So no one's can meet with us and an integration, no one's competing with your Shopify customers other than you. So we're just a communication tool to say, Hey, the order has been shipped, here's your tracking information, here is the link, please click on it.

00:14:28:13 - 00:14:49:07
Unknown
And that way they can see, okay, it's a stayed away from me or it's going to be here today. It's delivered, it's on the front porch. Mm hmm. Can you share some experiences of customers from your side on what kind of difference they saw in their business, what kind of savings they had, or more sales or more conversions and how long it took them to see these kinds of changes.

00:14:49:09 - 00:15:18:07
Unknown
We've had some merchants that started out with us, and they had yet to experience branching out into social commerce. And once they found out through Vice and that there was a way to connect talk into Shopify and Etsy into Shopify, the sells, not only did they have to spend money on marketing and SEO, they were going viral on social media as well.

00:15:18:07 - 00:15:35:03
Unknown
And so it's like, Well, let's harness the power of what's happening on social media. Just let them check out on Tik Tok. And then once you let them check out on TikTok, we can help send all of those orders over to Amazon for you. So that's been a fun experience to connect with Shopify merchants that are just selling on their website.

00:15:35:03 - 00:16:10:02
Unknown
You're spending a fortune on marketing and ads, not realizing you have this following on these other websites, and you just need to tap into that and make it convenient for this following to find your website and then quickly get that order place and get it sent over to Amazon. Another case that's been really exciting is for our stores that through the power of Mschf and selling their products on different channels, they've catch the eye of places like Shark Tank or Good Morning America.

00:16:10:02 - 00:16:44:05
Unknown
And so we've really seen an uptick of these viral products that have gained the attention of their country. And now they're being. So just this week, we had a large company that went live on Good Morning America. They set up a Shopify store really quick. They were already set up in Amazon. And not only were they making money on their native UK store and their native Europe store, they branched out into the United States with Good Morning America and sold over 2000 orders within a weekend and we helped within 8 minutes.

00:16:44:05 - 00:17:14:21
Unknown
All of these orders started coming and it was very quick just to get them shipped out and that's brand awareness. And so with these experiences, it really helps these merchants reach to customers all over. Now, I completely understand that social selling is a big thing. You should be multi-channel, but also multi social. And if you get viral or if your product becomes viral, then obviously you need to have a solid, fast working back end.

00:17:14:21 - 00:17:39:16
Unknown
And then obviously this combination fulfilled by Amazon is a good one. Now walk me through the typical onboarding process for a new user. How long does it takes? What kind of steps are involved to say and your homework to do before you can get started? So very quickly, I'll go over kind of the requirements of using an LLC US program because it is different than the FBA program.

00:17:39:16 - 00:18:07:20
Unknown
So something to be aware of is FBA is different than CRM. With MTF orders, for example, you need your products stored in the country. You want to ship to. It's a little bit different than FDA FBA. You might be able to ship your U.S. stored order products to Canada. With MTF, That's not the case. The reason for that is Amazon actually will not charge merchants a referral fee on their MTF orders.

00:18:07:22 - 00:18:24:23
Unknown
So FBA orders they charge you a referral fee on CFR orders. It's not coming from Amazon.com, so they're not going to charge you that referral fee, which is a perk perk, but it comes with a little bit of a drawback. They say, Well, if your products are stored in Canada, we're only going to ship MTF orders to Canada shipping addresses.

00:18:25:01 - 00:18:46:13
Unknown
So the requirement is the products have to be physical. They have to be associated with your seller central and they have to be in a warehouse. So unfortunately, this does not work on print on demand. Dropshipping Amazon influencing, for example. So you will want an Amazon seller account, you will want physical inventory and you will want a Shopify store.

00:18:46:15 - 00:19:08:01
Unknown
Other small requirements is we do use product SKUs or SKUs. A lot of merchants are familiar with an Asian and ESPN. The SKU is the only real unique identifier to their products. So that's something important in Shopify. When you're creating these product listings, just grab this SKU from Amazon seller Central and paste it to the products there inside of Shopify.

00:19:08:03 - 00:19:29:19
Unknown
When it comes to an app like by saying it's super easy to find on the Shopify App store, you click on the app, you click install and the app walks you through some setup steps of how to two buttons to attach the Amazon credentials, Select your bite stand plan because you might need a basic plan which starts out at $25 a month.

00:19:29:21 - 00:19:52:01
Unknown
There's no order limits. It comes with manual fixed rates and we just automatically start to manage things. For my stores that are a little bit more complex, you go to a second screen and choose, Do I want inventory thinking? Do I need help with virtual bundles? What about imported orders? And after that you're sent a flourish of emails to help with setup videos.

00:19:52:01 - 00:20:23:23
Unknown
We also have live help through our video chats where we do app demos and help stores set up the app. It can take anywhere. I would say to set up an app like Bites in 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of your business and what you're looking for. But then you have a huge support team that U.S. based sitting behind you waiting on live chat on videos, on email and on phone calls to help make you successful and keep you successful.

00:20:24:01 - 00:20:46:00
Unknown
Mm hmm. Very good overview. You already touched on my next question about the pricing structure. Is there anything more to know about the pricing structure? For instance, if you're in a different country, there is more to know there. The pricing structure is not different per country. I think earlier I had kind of listed the marketplaces that we are currently available and the pricing structure is based per marketplace.

00:20:46:02 - 00:21:02:08
Unknown
So we're not based off of order. So we're not going to say you've hit your 50 order limit for the month now you have to upgrade. We're going to say you're a U.S. merchant, you signed up for order fulfillment. It's $25 a month for manual fixed rates. Whether you fulfill 500 orders or 5000 that month, it's $25 a month.

00:21:02:12 - 00:21:24:05
Unknown
We don't add on extra fees. There's no percentage we take off the top. There's no hidden pricing. That's where it stops now, where it where the price continues is for add on features. So if you are a store that's on a grow plan or above and you're interested in the live Amazon shipping rates with your amp, with your order fulfillment that plans $35 a month and that's per marketplace.

00:21:24:11 - 00:21:55:02
Unknown
So my stores that are in the United States, it's one marketplace that's $25 a month. I have a lot of stores that are in the United States, the UK and Germany and Australia. It's $25 a month per marketplace, which controls all that order fulfillment. And we do inventory thinking, which is interesting to me. Not every single merchant is interested in inventory sinking my, my merchants that have ten or less SKUs or they rarely sell out on Amazon.

00:21:55:04 - 00:22:16:18
Unknown
It's not as much as a priority for them. There's kind of managing that on their own. So that's how we cap features like inventory thinking optional for the stores. I felt like that was a need for them. We didn't want to have a large price point and then priced merchants out. We're here for the merchants that are just getting started, that are moving from their garage to Amazon to see us.

00:22:16:18 - 00:22:35:15
Unknown
And we're here for the merchants that have already been on Shark Tank and are in six different countries. So pricing starts out at the $25 a month and can go up from there. Okay. Well, that's very straightforward and easy to understand. And I love that because it gives you some safety at the end of the months that you know what you're paying off.

00:22:35:15 - 00:22:58:12
Unknown
It's I mean, buy order. You might be surprised what comes out at the end of the month. And so, you know, from the beginning what you pay per month before we come to the end of the coffee break to take out. Is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? I would say just in your in your e-commerce journey, it is changing at the speed of light.

00:22:58:14 - 00:23:34:19
Unknown
So if you're already an Amazon merchant and you haven't started looking into the power of LCF, believe it or not, the MTF program can assist you on your Amazon.com rankings as well. So that's something to keep in mind. We're learning that. So Amazon is very inventory based and they like fresh inventory and they like quick turnover. So when you're selling your products faster and more places and you're shipping more inventory into Amazon, they actually appreciate that and start to put to you a little bit higher on Amazon.com.

00:23:34:19 - 00:23:58:11
Unknown
So that's something new that we're learning. The more more you're selling and the more you're refreshing, the more Amazon loves you. So not only does MTF help you on Shopify, on all your social e-commerce, it's helping you on your Amazon.com FBA listings as well. And when you're doing your research, take your time and find yourself a team that that can help.

00:23:58:11 - 00:24:23:14
Unknown
And that's something that we love here at BYTE. And as we've been a part of Amazon in the CRF ecosystem since 2006, and for us it's a passion project and it's personal. And so find yourself a team that is passionate about it and they're here to help you not only to benefit themselves, but to benefit you as well, because it can be an exciting journey and it can be overwhelming.

00:24:23:16 - 00:24:42:17
Unknown
But there's help out there that's good to know. I know that a lot of Shopify merchants were looking into Amazon, which I think is a necessity, are overwhelmed because it's a complete different beast. It's a universe out there. They have to have algorithms and then having somebody like you on their on your site to help you to get into it and to get best out of it, that's just a good choice.

00:24:42:19 - 00:25:03:13
Unknown
Where can people go and find out more about you? Yeah, so you can go to byte stand dot com and so let's be whitey Stan dot com. We also are on all the social media platforms or on the Shopify app store and look for byte stand alone S.F. Shipping. I won't pull all the links in the show notes.

00:25:03:13 - 00:25:12:08
Unknown
Then you're just one click away and a lot of people will reach out to you and find out what's the MTA program can do for them. Thanks so much for your time today. Perfect. Thank you.