If you’re selling through Amazon Vendor Central in Europe, then managing inbound logistics is a crucial foundation for maximising your profits.
With a strong handle on your supply chain, you’ll unlock new ways to reduce operating costs, optimise your stock levels, and secure a more seamless and efficient supply chain that reduces obstacles between you and your growth.
Luckily, Amazon has provided various initiatives to help Vendors achieve better incoming logistics, with two of these being the Amazon PICS program and Super PICs program.
In this guide, we’ll explore how Amazon PICS works, the benefits it can offer your Vendor logistics, and how you can start using Amazon PICs to start unlocking the full potential of Amazon.
The Amazon PICS (Amazon Pan-European Inbound Consolidation Service) is a solution created by Amazon designed to simplify inbound shipping for Amazon Vendors. The key difference between PICS and a standard Vendor setup is that it allows you to send your shipments to a select number of Amazon fulfilment centres.
When you’re enrolled in Amazon PICS, you’ll have the option to send products in a consolidated shipment to a small number of designated “injection points” in a specific country, rather than having to get your products to several different fulfilment centres throughout Europe. From there, Amazon will distribute the inventory to its various fulfilment centres, determining how units are shipped based on both demand and customers’ locations.
All told, PICS gives you the freedom to prepare fewer purchase orders with more inventory, and simplify your logistics considerably.
Amazon PICS is an invite-only program, and isn’t a standardised offering with fixed deliverables. Instead, it’s a customised way of working made to help Vendors align logistics with Amazon’s changing needs. With this in mind, it’s best to understand PICs as a renegotiation of your Amazon Vendor Agreements, rather than a specific product or service.
Aside from greatly reducing your workload when it comes to managing purchase orders, the Amazon PICS program has various indirect benefits for developing a more efficient and profitable Vendor Central operation.
Here are some of the key advantages you can experience when you’re enrolled in PICS on Amazon.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of being enrolled in the Amazon PICS program is the way it reduces the complexity of the standard Vendor central model.
When you’re enrolled in PICS, you won’t have to manually coordinate inbound deliveries to several Amazon fulfillment centres, meaning you won’t have to split shipments, arrange regional logistics, or manage a large volume of unique purchase orders. Instead, you’ll only have to take care of delivery to a small number of designated injection points, and let Amazon take care of the rest of the distribution process.
By fulfilling your orders through this model, you’ll be able to save time and resources for logistics management, which can be re-invested in other areas of your business.
Aside from the money you’ll save through reduced logistics management, Amazon PICS also has more direct and immediate cost savings you’ll be able to see when delivering your stock.
By consolidating your shipments into a smaller amount of delivery points, you’ll be able to improve the fill rates for trucks, minimise partial loads, and reduce the number of shipments you’ll need to book every quarter.
If, for example, you’re a homeware vendor based in the UK, and you usually have to send separate pallets to France, Spain, and Germany for each order cycle, PICS will allow you to skip this work and start sending your deliveries straight to one UK injection point. With consolidated carrier bookings and better fill rates, you’ll see significant savings in your overall transportation costs.
Amazon uses sophisticated algorithms to distribute products across its network, based on the forecasted demand from Amazon shoppers. This ensures that in-demand stock is located as close as possible to where your end customers are ordering from and maintains Amazon’s delivery speed and reliability, a key part of the Amazon flywheel.
Having to distribute shipments to multiple fulfilment centres yourself can increase the risk of misaligning shipments with seasonal demand, which can cause stockouts in some Amazon fulfilment centres, or overstocking in others.
When you’re enrolled in PICS, you’re essentially gaining access to the refined algorithms that have helped Amazon become as popular as it is today. Amazon will handle every aspect of your product distribution planning, ensuring better stock alignment, and maximising your brand’s delivery speed and stock availability with less responsibility on your part.
Amazon Vendor Central chargebacks can be a major drain on your profits, not to mention the time and resources it takes to dispute these charges.
These deductions are imposed for a whole range of potential issues in fulfilment, such as non-compliant labelling, incorrect routing, or missed delivery windows. When you’re having to make deliveries to multiple different Fulfilment Centres, with different delivery windows and country-specific packaging requirements, the chance of issues leading to chargebacks can increase significantly.
With PICS, you’ll only need to comply with the shipping requirements for a small number of injection points, greatly reducing the chances of human error that can lead to costly chargebacks.
Enrolling in PICS is a great way to shift the responsibility of complex, time-consuming tasks to Amazon and free up bandwidth for your team. This is an especially useful feature for small, growing brands whose resources are stretched already.
If, for example, you have one or two logistics managers trying to handle shipments across several different fulfillment centres, their working days can easily be taken up by coordinating these shipments, leaving no bandwidth for developing processes at your business. What’s more, a logistics manager spreading their time over multiple FCs can increase the risk of human error resulting in chargebacks.
If you’re able to enroll in PICS, your logistics managers will free up time they can spend on things like demand forecasting or planning for new markets. This can open up new opportunities that you wouldn’t have been able to pursue before, allowing you to expand your Amazon operation more efficiently.
Alongside standard PICS, Amazon also maintains an enhanced version of the distribution service called SuperPICS available to high-volume Vendors.
The basic idea of SuperPICS is basically the same as PICS, allowing vendors to consolidate their orders into a smaller number of deliveries and achieve better all-around efficiency.
The difference is that SuperPICS, as the name suggests, further enhances all the benefits of the PICS program, giving you less POs to handle, smoother deliveries, and better protection from chargebacks.
Here’s some of the key ways that SuperPICS differs from the standard PICS offering:
While PICS lets you consolidate your orders into deliveries to a small number of injection points, SuperPICS only has one point of entry you need to send stock to, usually in Germany or the UK.
Amazon will distribute your stock to a wider selection of fulfilment centres spread across several EU countries, going further to ensure your products are near the customers who want them and providing a positive customer experience.
The enhanced order consolidation can give you greater savings on freight and handling costs, while further simplifying the administrative burden that comes with handling multiple POs.
Because PICS is a tailored service based on mutual benefits for both you and Amazon, its eligibility requirements aren’t made explicitly clear by Amazon. However, after years of working with Vendors and helping them streamline their logistics, we’ve noticed certain traits shared by brands who are invited to the PICS program, including:
Having a consistent, substantial order volume delivering to several markets in Europe.
Sufficient logistical capability to consolidate shipments and make sure they’re delivered to the relevant Amazon Injection Points.
A strong record of meeting Amazon’s standards in terms of delivery and compliance.
The activation process for Amazon PICS can vary from one account to the next. While some qualifying accounts may be able to activate it directly, others will be invited to the program via email from an Amazon representative. If you qualify, Amazon PICS may also come up in your annual vendor negotiations (AVN).
Once PICS is activated on your account, the program begins swiftly. Order consolidation generally starts within 5-7 days of joining, and you don't need to make any significant changes on your end.
Amazon will designate the fulfilment centre(s) closest to your operating address in the EU as your injection point as part of your onboarding, which helps simplify the process further. You may also be able to request specific injection points in discussions with an Amazon representative.
Amazon PICS is a “contra-cogs” agreement between you and Amazon, meaning that it’s billed as an extra percentage “term” which is deducted from the invoices you raise with Amazon.
This percentage can vary from one PICS agreement to another, and reflects the costs Amazon incurs on their side by having to process and distribute your stock to their fulfilment network.
When working with our clients, PICS rates typically range between 2-5%, on top of any terms in the Vendor’s existing agreements.
Though PICS certainly has potential to save, it’s always important to compare the offering with the cost of servicing multiple different fulfilment centres. With all the different variables in a typical Vendor Central logistics chain, there may be situations where turning down a PICS offer could be the more economical option.
Optimising your Amazon supply chain isn’t easy, but initiatives like Amazon PICS can provide a lot of support when it comes to cutting unnecessary costs, streamlining admin, and giving your end customers the smoothest shopping experience possible.
Whether you’re already enrolled in the program or you’re just looking for new ways to optimise inbound logistics, we hope this guide has given you a better understanding of the role Amazon PICS can play in your Amazon operation.
For more support with optimising your Amazon logistics and making PICS work for you, be sure to check out our other blog posts, or get in touch for a free consultation and start unlocking Amazon’s potential.
Amazon PICS (Pan-European Inbound Consolidation Service) is a logistics solution designed for Vendors selling through Amazon Vendor Central in Europe. It allows you to consolidate deliveries to a small number of designated injection points, rather than coordinating shipments to multiple fulfilment centres. From there, Amazon handles the distribution across Europe, aligning stock with customer demand.
No, Amazon PICS is an invite-only program. It’s a tailored offering rather than a standard service, and enrolment typically depends on factors like your order volume, logistical capabilities, and delivery performance. Some vendors are invited via email, while others may see it offered during annual vendor negotiations.
PICS simplifies logistics by significantly reducing the number of delivery points and purchase orders you need to manage. This can lead to fewer errors, lower chances of chargebacks, and a reduced administrative workload - freeing up time for your team to focus on other areas of your business.
By consolidating shipments and reducing the number of separate deliveries, you can expect savings on freight and handling costs. Higher truck fill rates and fewer partial loads also contribute to better cost efficiency overall. However, it’s important to weigh these benefits against the percentage term charged by Amazon for PICS.
PICS operates on a “contra-cogs” basis, meaning Amazon deducts a percentage from your invoices. This rate typically ranges from 2-5%, depending on your specific agreement and the costs Amazon incurs distributing your stock across its network.
SuperPICS is an enhanced version of the standard PICS offering, usually reserved for high-volume Vendors. It reduces your delivery requirements to a single injection point, often in Germany or the UK, and provides even broader distribution across the EU. This results in greater freight efficiencies, smoother deliveries, and fewer administrative tasks.
Yes, by reducing the complexity of your shipments and limiting the number of fulfilment centres you deliver to, PICS reduces the likelihood of errors that can lead to chargebacks. You'll only need to follow the shipping requirements for a few injection points, making compliance easier and more consistent.