Amazon said Thursday that sellers will be able to ship one manufacturing run to a single Amazon-operated facility near their factory and reach customers in eight countries from that inbound shipment. The service, Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD), connects to the U.S. today and adds seven more countries by the end of the year: the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada.
Once all eight are connected, storage costs will run up to 45% lower than Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) in the U.S., and replenishment into Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) will be up to five days faster, the company said. Inventory will sit in one pool and move to a specific country only when demand shows up there, then flow into local FBA fulfillment centers.
Only 30% of Amazon’s selling partners list in more than one country, according to the company. Those that do earn 70% more revenue on average than sellers in just one.
Going global “meant essentially starting a new business in each country,” Sunny Jain, vice president of Worldwide Fulfillment by Amazon, wrote in a company blog post.
GWD sits alongside AWD, which Amazon has expanded beyond the U.S. into the EU, U.K., and Australia for sellers who want low-cost bulk storage with automatic replenishment into FBA. Amazon is also rolling out end-to-end supply chain visibility over the coming weeks: one interface tracks a shipment across Amazon-managed fulfillment from the moment the seller creates it, with a single reconciled unit count.
Compliance testing starts with toys
Sellers have told Amazon that compliance is the biggest reason they don’t expand internationally, Jain wrote. Every country sets its own requirements for packaging, labeling, safety testing, and ingredient restrictions, and sellers have often worked them out after the product was already manufactured.
Toy sellers now get a single specification for each destination country’s testing, labeling, and packaging requirements. One test submission satisfies multiple countries’ certification requirements, and existing certifications are recognized. Sellers in Amazon’s pilot program for one-submission testing reported savings of up to 60% on compliance costs, the company said.
Electronics and baby products follow by the end of the year. In 2027, Amazon plans to extend the approach to more categories and give sellers requirements and costs before they manufacture a single unit.
MORALVE, a family-run home organization company based in Canada, has expanded from the U.S. into Canada, the U.K., and Germany.
“Being able to understand the requirements for each country and then use Amazon’s logistics network to move inventory across multiple countries removed a lot of the complexity that traditionally comes with global expansion,” co-founder Mo Kuhail said in Amazon’s announcement.
Seller Central adds eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart
In a separate post the same day, Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Experience at Amazon, wrote that the first version of the company’s multichannel selling tools lets sellers connect eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart accounts to Seller Central, import and link off-Amazon listings, view sales and orders from those channels, and fulfill across them. The tools roll out gradually to sellers in the U.S. store over the coming months at no additional cost.
More than 95% of independent sellers in Amazon’s store sell across multiple channels, the company said. On the Manage Orders page, a seller can select a Shopify order, fulfill it through Amazon, and tracking updates flow back to Shopify automatically.
Orders placed on rival storefronts now route straight into Amazon’s fulfillment network.
A profitability dashboard will pull sales, ad spend, and traffic from connected channels into one view.
“We have a team of three dedicated to reporting, and I’d estimate they spend about 5 hours at the end of each month to compile everything by logging into each channel individually,” said Pamela Lee, director of digital operations at Elizabeth Mott, an Amazon selling partner.
Westmoreland wrote that Amazon is working toward Seller Central becoming “the single place where independent sellers manage their entire business, not just their Amazon listings, across every channel where they sell.”
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