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Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)
Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) is a fulfillment method that allows qualified Amazon sellers with Professional seller accounts to display the Amazon Prime badge on orders fulfilled via their own warehouse or third-party logistics providers.
Seller Qualifications
In order to become eligible and maintain eligibility for SFP, the seller must always be eligible for the Premium Shipping program. The 90-day eligibility requirements for an item to qualify are:
- An on-time delivery rate of 93.5% or greater
- Valid tracking rate of 99%
- Seller-Initiated Cancellation Rate of less than 0.5%
- Late shipment rate of less than 4%
- Ship at least 100 SFP packages each month—shifting from the previous 90-day evaluation period—and maintain consistent shipping throughout the month.
- Have a domestic US address as your default shipping address
- Have an Amazon Professional selling account
Note: These requirements apply exclusively to Premium Shipping orders (One-Day and Two-Day). SFP orders are evaluated under separate criteria.
Sellers wishing to sign up for Seller Fulfilled Prime must complete a trial period to show they’re capable of meeting SFP’s requirements. The Prime badge will NOT be displayed on items enrolled in Seller Fulfilled Prime during this time, however, order processing must still be handled with a zero-day handling time. The criteria to pass the trial period* include:
- Participate for 30 days
- Ship 100 or more packages from Prime trial orders
- An on-time delivery rate of at least 93.5%
- A valid tracking rate of at least 99%
- A seller-initiated cancellation rate of less than 0.5%
- Meet minimum thresholds for one-day and two-day delivery speeds as viewed by Prime customer detail page views
Note that sellers are now limited to three Amazon SFP trial attempts per calendar year. Trial graduations are paused around major sales events like Prime Day and Black Friday to ensure sellers aren’t caught unprepared during peak demand. For the upcoming season, the latest trial start date before the Black Friday–Christmas freeze is September 15, 2025.
Once the trial period is successfully completed (after a minimum of 100 orders meet the criteria above) sellers will automatically be enrolled into Seller Fulfilled Prime and enrolled ASINs will display the Prime badge to customers. The requirements to maintain Seller Fulfilled Prime status* include:
- Free one-day and two-day delivery for Prime customers
- Free nationwide standard shipping for all customers
- Meet minimum thresholds for one-day and two-day delivery speeds as viewed by Prime customer detail page views
- An on-time delivery rate of at least 93.5%
- A valid tracking rate of at least 99%
- A seller-initiated cancellation rate of less than 0.5%
- Ship and deliver Prime orders on weekends (Saturday, Sunday, or both)
- Offer Free Returns on items weighing under 50 lb
- All post-order customer service inquiries are managed by Amazon
Take note that the previous overall trial period was longer in length and order volumes — sellers would have to fulfill 200 orders in 90 days. Now, sellers must fulfill 100 packages in the last 90 days. However, those who can meet this requirement in a shorter time period can get onto the shorter trial period of 30 days. For some, this is a welcome advantage, as it shortens the time to enrollment. Smaller sellers only capable of carrying out smaller monthly volume orders may miss out on this advantage, though.
Sellers should also note that they now have a three-strike allowance per program requirement. In the past, Amazon would suspend sellers who failed to meet any certain metric. Now, sellers have greater flexibility to address issues. Nevertheless, reaching the three-strike limit necessitates a return to the pre-qualification process, representing a significant reset within the program.
Considerations When Deciding to Use SFP
- Know who is buying your items. Identify and drill down which geographic regions your customers are in to help you decide where you will benefit from selling via SFP. This will be dependent on where your warehouse is located and what the local shipping rates are.
- Identify your competitors that are selling via SFP and know where they are located.
- Pay close attention to Amazon’s FBA fees, as they tend to change frequently without notice.
How to Join and Shorten Your Trial Period
There are a few easy ways to join Seller Fulfilled Prime, a process that should only take about 15 minutes according to Amazon SFP expert Skyler Fancher. You can visit amazon.com/sfp or visit the sfp@amazon.com page in Seller Central.
In order to qualify and be accepted, you need to demonstrate your capabilities of Prime fulfillment excellence and customer satisfaction throughout the trial. How can you expedite your trial period so you are prepared for Q4? Amazon recommends assigning Prime templates to your fastest moving SKUs so you can reach 50 orders in a timely manner.
You can also add a majority of your ASINs, or as many as possible without increasing your shipping cost. Be sure to link your carrier accounts such as UPS or FedEx so you can still leverage your volume discounts with SFP. Lastly, monitor your SFP-specific performance metrics daily to ensure that you are adhering to the program requirements.
When you are deciding where to be regional for SFP, the decision will be largely impacted by your business model and size of your business. However, one recommendation that Amazon has is to put your high margin SKUs on a national Prime template (you can mix ground and air shipping to cover the entire country) and put your low margin items on a regional Prime template.
In Seller Central, there’s a regional Prime assignment workflow where you can go in and select the regions, states, or even subsections of states in order to maximize your Prime exposure and ensure that you are covering major metropolitan areas. You can drill down your region according to one-day and two-day delivery to maximize your coverage.
If you check your SFP performance metrics daily throughout the trial period and adhere to the requirements, you should be on track to diversify your fulfillment model by the holiday season. With SFP in the mix and research to show that Prime shoppers buy more frequently than non-Prime customers, you are opening the door to incremental profits in time for Q4.
Advantages of SFP
There are several reasons that sellers are transitioning specific ASINs to be fulfilled via Seller-Fulfilled Prime:
- To receive access to the Prime customer base. More exposure and product discoverability on the marketplace will lead to more sales conversions.
- To gain complete control over your inventory, which eliminates the need to send stock to Amazon.
- To experience the same Buy Box privileges as Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) sellers.
- To eliminate FBA shipping and handling fees.
- To avoid FBA long-term storage fees, which are being evaluated on a monthly basis beginning in September 2018 and will be scrutinized more meticulously.
- To increase profits on bulky, heavy merchandise that are subject to high FBA fees and FBA-ineligible items (typically those deemed as hazardous).
- Sell certain products that are ineligible for FBA.
- To instill a more seamless returns process. With SFP, sellers can directly handle returns on Prime purchases, which will help them track and identify product returns.
Which Products Have Seen Results With SFP?
70% of sellers have reported a 20+% sales increase with Prime. 60 million units were delivered to customers via SFP in the first half of 2018, revealing the impactful, end-to-end capabilities of the program. SFP is best suited for a wide range of products, typically those that are not good for FBA or where you have significant investment in fulfillment already, such as the following types of items:
- Appliances and furniture items that are heavy and bulky (FBA fees are determined by an item’s size and weight)
- High value or fragile items that sellers don’t want a lot of touchpoints on
- Seasonal/perishable items that will only sell for part of the year, have a low shelf life, or have specific storage restrictions
- Items with uncertain demand and variation
- Fast fashion items
- Items that don’t sell quickly
- Personalized/customized items
- Products shipped in multiple boxes
- Items with serial numbers
To apply for SFP, sellers should navigate to ‘Seller Fulfilled Prime’ in Seller Central and create Prime shipping templates based off if they will be shipping regionally or nationally. Next, they should select the products that they want to add to Prime and ship orders with Buy Shipping. If sellers have carrier discounts, those can be passed on using the Buy Shipping tool.
Sellers need to complete the Seller Fulfilled Prime trial according to the performance metrics outlined above. If a seller graduates the trial, Amazon will notify you two days prior so that you can prepare to engage in SFP.
SFP Tips, Tricks, and New Features
- Shorten your trial period by using your top ten fastest moving SKUs. Stay on top of your reviews to make sure customers aren’t hindered by anything on your listings. The trial does not require you to ship free two-day delivery; standard shipping is permitted unless the customer purchased two-day or faster shipping.
- Set up Ship by Region to reduce the cost of shipping. This will allow you to drill down to the sections of states that you want to offer SFP in, assigning specific parts of states to SKUs of your choice.
- Link your own shipping accounts to access your rates through Buy Shipping.
- Monitor your performance. Track all three SFP-eligibility metrics carefully in order to better enhance the Prime experience for customers. You can also pull a defect report from Seller Central to find the root source of where you are underperforming. Amazon has a specific team for SFP metrics issues that can be helpful if issues arise.
- Use the Prime order throttling feature to limit your order volume. For example, if you are starting to ramp up and expand your business and only want to do 100 Prime orders a day, it will revert back to a standard 3-5 day template once you’ve hit 100 Prime orders.
- Hit the little red button when necessary. If you need to suspend your SFP program for any reason, this is a quick way to do so.
The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime
Choosing to enroll in Seller Fulfilled Prime is a strategic decision that requires careful alignment with program expectations and a clear view of the potential rewards. With its recent updates, Seller Fulfilled Prime continues to offer significant advantages, but success depends on understanding the nuances and tailoring your approach to fit your unique operations.
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