It's Amazon's turn to woo sellers, launches Service Providers Network

In the super-competitive marketplace race to woo sellers (to on-board their platform), Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd today announced the launch of the Amazon Service Providers Network (ASPN). ASPN is a network of empanelled third party service providers who will help bridge seller capability gaps in the new digital economy.

One of the sellers on the platform, Mumbai-based Rushabh Shah, Proprietor of Graham Solutions, had no prior experience in creating a digital catalog. He says,

ASPN helps sellers to quickly ramp up their online strategy. As sellers, we don’t have to worry about quality and pricing of these services as we know these are trusted service providers qualified by Amazon. These service providers are trained and do not need any guidance on meeting Amazon standards.

The overall service helps the sellers boost sales by making them focus on their core business and outsourcing these services. Here are some key points about the seller services on Amazon India:

1. ASPN complements and is in addition to the existing Seller University and Amazon Trained e-commerce Specialist (ATES) network.
2. All three services aim to empower sellers who are not online savvy or constrained by time & expertise to start or manage their online sales channel and succeed on Amazon platforms.
3. While ATES enrolls trained freelancers, SPN is aimed at professionals and small to large companies, which specialize in services such as imaging and transportation. Seller university is a formal coaching & training program structured for self-learning through online videos, instructor led webinars, face-to-face institute learning as well as seller forums and workshops.
4. ASPN has 21 service providers across 35 cities and these include imaging studios, local transportation companies, and digital design studios, etc., which have been trained on Amazon systems and processes.

Sellers registering with Amazon.in can access information on all service providers through Seller Central, the online resource tool for amazon.in sellers.

What is the offering?

These service providers offer two services called Amazon Fly and Amazon Boost.

• Amazon Fly provides an integrated suite of services that a seller can use to launch on Amazon such as preparing Amazon standard catalogue (feed), including product images and creating listings through Seller Central.
• Amazon Boost offers include services such as Fulfilled by Amazon shipment creation, managing buyer-seller communication and new product listing to expand the selection.

Sellers can choose these as a bundled product or cherry-pick services à la carte. Sellers can use one or more services as per their requirement and pay as they use.

At the moment, ASPN is being used by a wide range of sellers, including large retailers like Shoppers Stop, small offline sellers like Max Exports, online sellers like Fashionara and more.

This time for sellers!

Snapdeal has been vocal about their ambitious target of onboarding one million sellers on their marketplace in the next three years. Flipkart has also shared its plans to foray into advertisement segment to help sellers (on their platform and others) with visibility. The e-commerce giant also plans to scale up its training presence across 40 cities in the next six months. Recently, Snapdeal also announced its sellers using the company's SME financing options to raise $8 million.

With the competition getting more fierce, the market forces are divided between the acquisition and retention of customers on one hand and nurturing the sellers on another.