AC2 Sales / Choosing a route
The same product, three routes onto Amazon, and economics that are not close once you count the things these comparisons leave out. We are one of the three, so check the arithmetic.
A brand with a product that sells has three ways onto Amazon. Sell wholesale to Amazon itself through Vendor Central. Open a Seller Central account and run the channel. Or sell to a reseller who does both of those things on their own account.
Most comparisons of this cover the first two and stop, usually written by someone who wants to be hired for the second. We are one of the three options, so read this knowing that — and check the arithmetic, which is the part that does not care who wrote it.
One note on how the numbers below are built. Your own product cost is the same whichever route you take, so it is left out entirely. What is compared is what you keep per unit before your product cost. That makes the three columns directly comparable, and you can drop your own cost in at the end without any of the conclusions moving.
The 3P side is the only one with published rates, so start there.
Vendor Central has no published rate card, because it is not a fee structure — it is a negotiated wholesale relationship. What brands consistently report: 45% to 65% off retail, co-op and marketing allowances of 2% to 5% of invoice value, chargeback exposure of 1% to 3% of annual revenue, and net 60 to 90 payment terms.
A $50 retail item. Advertising at 20% of sales, which is mid-range for a competitive category.
| Per unit | Vendor Central | Run 3P yourself | Sell to a reseller |
|---|---|---|---|
| You receive | $25.00 wholesale | $50.00 retail | your wholesale price |
| Referral fee | — | −$7.50 | — |
| Fulfillment | −$1.00 ship‑in | −$5.54 | — |
| Co‑op / allowances | −$0.75 | — | — |
| Chargeback allowance | −$0.50 | — | — |
| Advertising | — | −$10.00 | — |
| Storage and returns | — | −$0.77 | — |
| You keep, before product cost | $22.75 | $26.19 | whatever you negotiate |
On this example, Vendor Central leaves you $22.75 a unit and running the channel yourself leaves $26.19, both before your product cost. As shares of retail that is roughly 46% and 52%.
A wholesale offer above about 46% of retail beats Vendor Central outright. One above about 52% beats running the channel yourself — before you have paid anybody to do the running.
Those two percentages move with your advertising rate and with whatever discount Amazon has negotiated out of you, which is the subject of the next section.
That last clause carries more weight than it looks. Somebody has to operate a 3P account: listings, cases, shipment planning, advertising, and the daily attention that stops a channel drifting. The working benchmark is half to one full-time person per 200 active SKUs.
Put a fully loaded cost of $60,000 to $100,000 on the role. Across 20,000 units a year that is $3.00 to $5.00 a unit, and across 50,000 units it is $1.20 to $2.00 — in both cases enough to move the $27.00 line down materially.
Those salary figures are an assumption, not a measurement. Substitute your own; the arithmetic is simple and the direction rarely changes.
This is the question most brands are really asking, and the honest answer is that it depends far more on how hard Amazon has squeezed your wholesale price than on anything else. A brand buying at 45% off retail has a good deal worth keeping. A brand pushed to 65% off is being paid to leave.
Below is the Amazon revenue at which running the channel yourself earns back the cost of one person to run it — taken at $80,000 fully loaded, on a $50 average selling price.
| Amazon's wholesale discount | 15% ad spend | 20% ad spend | 25% ad spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45% off retail | $1.12M | $3.75M | never |
| 50% off retail | $0.67M | $1.16M | $4.24M |
| 55% off retail | $0.48M | $0.69M | $1.21M |
| 60% off retail | $0.37M | $0.49M | $0.70M |
| 65% off retail | $0.31M | $0.38M | $0.50M |
The spread is the point. There is no single revenue figure at which 3P starts winning — it runs from about $310,000 a year to $4.2 million, and in the top-right corner it never happens at all. A brand with good vendor terms in an expensive category should stay on Vendor Central permanently, and no volume changes that.
Good vendor terms (45–50% off): stay. You need seven figures of Amazon revenue and cheap advertising before running it yourself pays for the person running it.
Middling terms (around 55% off): the switch pays somewhere between $500,000 and $1.2 million a year.
Squeezed terms (60–65% off): move. It pays from roughly $400,000.
None of the above applies to cheap products. FBA charges per unit while Vendor Central discounts by percentage, so as the price falls the 3P advantage disappears. Solving for the price at which the two routes are level puts the crossover between $19 and $72, again depending on your discount and ad rate. Under roughly $25, Vendor Central usually wins at any volume, because there is no per-unit advantage left for the salary to eat into.
Every figure in this section is a model, not a measurement. The salary, storage, returns and chargeback allowances are estimates, and the 45–65% discount range is drawn from reported vendor terms rather than a published schedule. The salary assumption alone moves the middle row between $870,000 and $1.45 million. Use it to find your row, then rebuild it with your own numbers before deciding anything.
Per-unit profit is the number everyone compares. It is rarely the thing that decides the outcome.
On Vendor Central, Amazon does. It can discount your product whenever it likes, and it frequently does, which resets what every other channel expects to pay and gives your other retail accounts a reason to complain. You cannot appeal this. It is the deal.
On your own account you set the price. Selling to a reseller, they set it — which is only an advantage if they have a commercial reason to hold it up. A reseller who owns the inventory does. Whether they defend it is a fair question to ask before signing anything.
This is the difference brands underestimate most. Vendor Central's terms are a working capital decision disguised as a payment schedule — you are financing Amazon's inventory for two to three months, every month, forever.
Chargebacks are a Vendor Central fact of life: labeling, routing, ASN accuracy, delivery windows. Estimates put the exposure at 1% to 3% of annual revenue, and disputing them is its own job. On 3P you own the errors but they are your errors, visible and fixable. Selling to a reseller, the operational risk moves to them along with the inventory.
We are the third option — we buy inventory outright and pay net 30. We also run managed accounts, which is the second column. What we pay varies by category and product, so the honest thing to publish is the method rather than a number: hold our offer against the two lines above and see where it lands.
Both facts should make you read the numbers more carefully, not less. They are drawn from published 2026 Amazon rates and widely reported Vendor Central terms, and every one of them is checkable.
Work out what each alternative leaves you per unit before your own product cost, since that cost is identical whichever route you take. On a $50 item that is about $23.25 for Vendor Central and about $27.00 for running your own account. A wholesale offer above those beats them on the number, and the $27.00 still excludes the cost of the people who run the account.
The wholesale discount is the visible part, commonly 45 to 65 percent off retail. Then co-op and marketing allowances of roughly 2 to 5 percent of invoice value, chargeback exposure estimated at 1 to 3 percent of annual revenue, and payment on net 60 to 90 terms. Amazon also sets the retail price, which means it effectively sets your MAP.
A referral fee of 15 percent in most categories, with a range of 5 to 45 percent and a $0.30 per unit minimum. FBA fulfillment is now banded by price as well as size, running roughly $3.73 to $6.97 for a large standard unit priced between $10 and $50, plus a 3.5 percent fuel surcharge applied since April 2026. Storage is $0.78 per cubic foot from January to September and $2.40 in the fourth quarter.
No. Two offers at the same price are not the same deal. A reseller paying net 30 rather than net 60 to 90 halves the working capital you carry, takes no co-op deductions, raises no chargebacks, and has a commercial interest in holding your price up rather than discounting it. Compare the number first, then compare the terms.
Then the honest answer is that Amazon may not be worth the channel conflict for your brand right now, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. It is a real answer and we give it on first calls.
Send your catalog and your current route. We will build this table with your real product costs, your category's referral rate, and your actual volumes — and tell you which column wins, including when it is not the one we are in.
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