Unbranded Packaging Now Automatically Applied to MCF Amazon Orders: Dec 2022

When shopping directly on a brand’s website, you typically don’t expect your package to arrive with an Amazon Prime Logo. 

However, this doesn’t necessarily rule out that your order was fulfilled by Amazon with unbranded packaging through the MCF program. Amazon has recently announced They’ve begun to automatically ship all Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) orders with Unbranded Packaging at no added cost.

What is MCF?

Brands who don’t have a warehousing and distribution center of their own, often rely on 3^rd Party Fulfillment services like Deliverr and ShipBob. Amazon realized they can easily offer this service to brands (at lower costs compares to competitors) and launched MCF back in 2020.

The program allows brands to store their products at Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and have their orders shipped out to customers. MCF integrates with most e-commerce sites including Shopify, Sellbrite and many more; see a full list of compatible sites here.

MCF enrollment and associated fees

It’s not a requirement to have a selling account to participate in MCF. Brands can enroll here. For existing Amazon sellers, your FBA inventory and MCF inventory will be comingled; meaning regardless of whether an order was placed on your website or through Amazon directly, the order is being pulled from the same supply of inventory.

Amazon currently charges $0.83/cubic foot for storage, and a base cost of $4.75/unit shipped out. With a flat fee of almost five dollars per unit shipped, keep in mind that it won’t make sense for lower value items to be sold through MCF. We recommend brands who are interested in using MCF to fulfill their orders to analyze each product and see whether they would still be profitable beforehand.

Why is Amazon now shipping MCF orders unbranded?

As mentioned in the beginning of this article, most people don’t expect their package to come covered in Prime logos if they ordered from a non-Amazon website. Therefore, Amazon offers a blank “unbranded” packaging as an option – and is now automatically shipping MCF orders in unbranded packaging for no additional fees.

This change allows Brands using MCF to better tell their Brand Story without customers necessarily needing to know that their order came from Amazon’s fulfillment centers. We can assume that Amazon made this move to encourage brands to use their MCF service, and because overall, it just makes more sense.

With the constant updates in online marketplaces, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest changes. If you are a client looking for additional information, contact your strategist or if you are interested in learning more about how Retail Bloom can assist your brand efforts in online marketplaces, schedule a consultation with our team. 

For more updates on marketplaces, visit our full Marketplace Updates content gallery.