Amazon FBA sellers have to make sure their shipping boxes are the correct shape, size, material, and weight and that they are properly labeled before sending them off to a fulfillment center.
With all the precise and complicated rules you have to follow as an Amazon FBA seller, it’s tempting to ask whether Amazon can actually provide boxes for you instead of having to source them yourself.
To find boxes to use as an Amazon FBA seller, it’s cheapest to reuse suitable boxes you have lying around or ask friends and family for their unwanted shipping boxes. You can also find them for free at grocery stores and on Craigslist. Alternatively, you can buy suitable shipping boxes in bulk from Uline.
Amazon FBA Box Requirements
Let’s take a look at the main requirements for shipping inventory to an Amazon fulfillment center.
To quote their support page,
“Amazon may refuse, return, or repackage any product delivered to a fulfillment center with inadequate or non-compliant packaging at your expense.”
Therefore, it’s really important that your shipping boxes meet Amazon’s requirements, or you could encounter issues with the shipments you send to them.
With that said, while Amazon’s requirements seem daunting at first, don’t be dissuaded. Once you’re familiar with the requirements and you’ve got the workflow down, sending shipments to Amazon becomes a lot easier.
Types of Boxes Required for Amazon FBA
You might think a box is a box and that’s the end of it. Unfortunately, not all types of boxes are appropriate for Amazon FBA. As outlined in Amazon Seller Central’s Shipping and routing requirements page, the following kinds of boxes are acceptable:
- Regular slotted carton
- B flute
- ECT-32 (edge crush test)
- 200BH (burst strength)
We’ll talk about where you can source these kinds of boxes later in this article.
Box Size and Weight Requirements
Amazon has requirements for the acceptable dimensions of shipping boxes based on the size of the items inside. You can pack several “standard-size” items into a single box, according to a few rules…
You can’t pack multiple “standard-size” items into a box that’s longer than 25 inches on any side. They also won’t allow boxes that contain multiple items which together weigh more than 50 pounds. If you exceed either of these requirements, you’ll incur a service fee, which can be $75 or more.
If you need to pack a single item that weighs more than 50 lbs, you’ll have to apply a “Team Lift” safety label on the top and sides of the box. For items over 100 lbs, you’ll have to apply a “Mechanical Lift” label instead.
Packing multiple oversized items in an oversize box is fine, as long as you follow all the appropriate weight requirements.
Amazon also says that fragile, sharp, and hazardous items should be over-boxed for added protection – even if the item already has its own prepared packaging. These items include, but are not limited to:
- knives
- tools
- glassware
- hazardous liquids in glass containers
- vinyl records
Packaging Materials
Known in the industry as dunnage or void fill, packing materials are the bits of filler material used to fill empty space in a box so that the items inside aren’t thrown around during transport, potentially causing damage to the item.
Improperly packed items can even damage and break out of the box they’re packed in, which could result in lost inventory or even injury if they’re particularly sharp or heavy items.
In general, try to keep a box “tight”, meaning don’t leave any room for products to shift or slide around in transit.
Amazon considers the following to be approved packaging materials:
- Foam sheets or cushioning
- Air pillows
- Bubble wrap
- Scrunched up bits of paper, ideally thick kraft paper
You can buy packaging materials in bulk, like this kraft paper,
or save packaging materials from deliveries and purchases of your own.
Labeling Requirements
As stated on Amazon’s shipping and routing requirements page, Amazon requires that each shipping box be labeled with both an FBA label and a shipping label.
All shipping labels must include a shipment ID and scannable barcode, as well as ship-from and ship-to addresses.
Reusing Old Boxes
As an Amazon FBA seller, it’s totally fine to reuse old boxes that you have lying around, as long as they are not structurally compromised and still meet all the requirements Amazon has for shipping boxes, like not being more than 25″ on any side.
If you reuse an old box, just make sure to remove old shipping labels, barcodes, and other stickers to avoid confusion. Otherwise, your shipment may never make it to the fulfillment center, or Amazon may charge you an unplanned services fee.
You can peel old stickers off using your Scotty peeler, go over them with opaque tape, or even fill in old barcodes with a marker pen so that they can no longer be read by a scanner.
If you already have some old shipping boxes laying around the house, or can salvage them from elsewhere, this is obviously the cheapest way to get your inventory packaged up for sending to a fulfillment center. The only cost being a bit of your own time removing or covering old labels yourself.
Where Can I Get Cheap Shipping Boxes?
The cheapest option is to reuse any old boxes you have lying around, but in the absence of that, here are a few options.
You can try to source free boxes by looking for people near you who are giving them away. You might find people in the “Free” section on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace trying to get rid of their old moving boxes.
If you ask an employee at a grocery store, there’s a good chance they’ll have empty boxes they can give you, although these boxes may not necessarily meet all the FBA requirements for size and strength, so make sure to only take those that meet the requirements.
Also, talk to your friends and family about your desire to collect cardboard boxes, and ask them to hold on to any they might get from deliveries and purchases of their own. That way, you can collect their unwanted boxes to make use of for your shipments.
Buy Them from Amazon
Sometimes you just want to get lots of suitable boxes quickly and easily, like in the lead-up to Q4. One good way to do that is to order a whole bunch of shipping boxes online from Amazon in bulk, and have them delivered to your door. They come in a variety of sizes, but for Amazon FBA sellers the following sizes are popular (remember, a box can’t have any dimension longer than 25 inches!):
FBA Label Service and FBA Prep Service
Once you have your box needs figured out, you can turn your attention to your product’s prep and labeling, if necessary.
If printing and applying the appropriate labels to your inventory is too time-consuming for you, Amazon FBA has something called FBA Label Service, whereby Amazon will apply barcode labels to eligible items for a $0.55 per-item fee.
This service can be enabled during the process of creating a shipping plan.
To be eligible for the FBA Label Service, a product must have a scannable barcode (GCID, UPC, EAN, JAN, or ISBN) that corresponds to an ASIN in Amazon’s online catalog.
Products that are “prohibited, restricted, or high-value” are not eligible for the FBA Label Service. You can read more about this on the FBA Label Service support page at Amazon Seller Central.
Amazon also offers FBA Prep Service whereby they will “ensure that your products are properly packaged and prepared for fulfillment” for a per-unit fee. The fee is different for standard-size and oversize items. With this service, the FBA Label Service may be included automatically as well for certain items.
If you want to read more about shipping labels and product labels, I have a guide here.
Need a label printer to properly (and efficiently) label your boxes? Check out my 3 recommendations here.
Want to see the tools I use for my Amazon business? See this page.