Prepping Shoes and Clothing to Amazon FBA Standards

Why do we, and other prep centers, charge a shoe and clothing fee on top of our normal per item pricing? 

Unless you’ve prepped the items yourself in the past, you may not realize that extra care and prep are required by Amazon. Both our intake and production teams work have more steps to take on shoes and clothing than they do on other items.

Here are the steps we take for shoes: 

1. Check that shoes are a pair (same color and style)
2. Check that size is correct on each shoe 
3. Check for left and right shoe
4. Check for and remove price tags
5. Check condition of box 
6. Rubber bands shoe box to indicate inspection is complete 
   1. If the shoes do not come with a box, such as slippers or Crocs, they will need to be polybagged to meet Amazon’s standards. 
7. Check that the shoes we are sending match the shoes on the listing. While we do this with all products, shoes especially are tricky. 

Here is what we do when we process clothing:

1. Tags need to be removed or covered, especially if they have pricing!
2. All clothes (and cloth items) need to be polybagged – this is an amazon requirement
   1. But the polybag can not extend more than 3 inches beyond the product so we may need to tape or replace polybags to fit that standard
   2. We also may tape the polybags to make the units smaller so that they take up less space at the Amazon Warehouse as well.
3. Size and color/style must be verified.

We do our due diligence to ensure that the items that make it to Amazon are the items they were expecting, in the way they were expecting, so that you don’t get in trouble or need to pay additional fees. Part of how we do this, in addition to all of the above, is we do not process commingled items at our facility unless previously approved or discussed. 

If you have units that require special preparation in any way feel free to reach out to your Account Manager so we can pass along that information to our team.