17 Amazon sellers · SplitSmart inbound
Tactical analyzed 17 Amazon sellers who moved from paying placement fees to a 5-way split, and most saw sales rise 3 to 4%, with some seeing as much as 7%.
| 17 Amazon sellers, placement fees against a 5-way split | |
| Sellers in the analysis | 17, all of whom shared their sales data |
| What changed | From paying placement fees to a 5-way split |
| Most sellers | 3 to 4% sales lift |
| Highest results | Up to 7% |
Where your inventory sits decides which shoppers Amazon shows your product to, and a placement fee pays Amazon to decide that for you.
Amazon Ranks the Product That’s Cheapest to Ship to the Shopper
Amazon wants to spend as little as possible getting an order to a customer, so it pushes the product sitting closest to that customer. When you pay placement fees and ship to 1 location, Amazon spreads your inventory to the fulfillment centers it chooses, and a competitor already selling well in a region keeps that region.
A 5-Way Split Puts Your Inventory in the Regions You’re Missing
Splitting inbound across 5+ Amazon destinations makes a shipment optimized, which means no placement fees. Amazon then moves your inventory from those destinations across 50 to 60 fulfillment centers, against the 9 to 12 that a single placement-fee shipment reaches. SplitSmart delivers that split for you with live unloads, so freight is received on arrival rather than waiting in Amazon’s yard.
WATCH: See how SplitSmart gets you faster FBA splits without AWD
A 3 to 4% Lift Is Real Money at Your Volume
Across the 17 sellers, most saw sales rise 3 to 4%, and some saw as much as 7%. On a brand doing $3M a year, a 4% lift is about $120,000 in sales that were going to competitors in regions your inventory never reached.
The Brands That Gain Most Are the Ones Winning Some Regions and Missing Others
A product selling hundreds of thousands of units a month gets spread across every region anyway, and for it the difference is mostly how long inventory spends in FC transfer. The lift shows up for a brand that sells well but isn’t dominating every region yet. Look at the states where your competitor outsells you and check whether your inventory is even there.
Find the regions your inventory isn’t reaching
Tell us where you sell and how you ship into Amazon today, and we’ll walk through what a 5-way split would change.
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