The Amazon Fulfillment Web Service (Amazon FWS) allows merchants to tap in to Amazon’s network of fulfillment centers and our expertise in logistics. Merchants can store their own products to our fulfillment centers and then, using a simple web service interface, fulfill orders for the products.
That’s right – make a web service call, ship a product to a customer!
Amazon FWS builds on our existing Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) service by adding programmatic access to the fulfillment process.
There are two sets of APIS – Inbound and Outbound.
The Inbound service gives merchants the ability to create and send shipments to an Amazon fulfillment center (FC). The getInboundShipmentPreview function is used to locate one or more Amazon FCs to receive a particular product. The service may choose to send products to a variety of FCs in order to balance supplies across the entire network. Next, the putInboundShipment function is used to inform Amazon that the merchant will be shipping the product to the indicated FCs. Once the products have been shipped, the setInboundShipmentStatus function is used to inform Amazon that the product is actually on its way.
The Outbound service gives merchants the ability to ship products from Amazon FCs to their customers. This service revolves around the concept of a fulfillment order. The order contains a destination address, a shipping speed, and a list of item/quantity pairs to be shipped. The createFulfillmentOrder function is used to initiate the shipping process. There are also functions for listing all orders, cancelling orders, and getting the status of an order.
There’s more information on the Amazon FWS detail page.
-- Jeff;
Very cool, I always am excited to see how you all are making the online life easier for all parties, consumers and sellers. The fulfillment prices seem to nice also, always great to be able to take advantage of economies of scale without having to be individually large enough to do it.
Posted by: Charlie Key | March 20, 2008 at 06:36 AM
Do you guys take shipments from abroad. i.e custom clearance etc if I ship from say china to your warehouse in seattle and then use your fulfilment service
Posted by: Niraj | March 20, 2008 at 05:10 PM
With this program when you send stuff out does it go out with amazon branded boxes? or how does it work? we're a baby clothing company and would like to know more about the program. thank you.
Posted by: Tuni & G | March 20, 2008 at 06:08 PM
This looks great--when fulfilment was first released, my main concerns were that there was so much manual work and that things were shipped in Amazon-logo boxes. The first is fixed; not quite clear about the second, but if not, hopefully you'll fix that soon (plain boxes are ok).
Posted by: Dan | March 20, 2008 at 06:12 PM
Congratulations, Jeff! Looks like I have a new and exciting toy to play with. :D
Posted by: M. David Peterson | March 21, 2008 at 05:42 AM
Amazon FWS appears to be an excellent product........three cheers to the Amazon team
Posted by: Vectorpedia (Rick) | March 23, 2008 at 07:01 AM