A jewellery 3PL is a third-party logistics warehouse that stores your stock and ships customer orders. To send jewellery to Amazon FBA or a 3PL from India, you either ship direct to the warehouse as importer of record, or land the goods with your own broker and forward them. In both cases, labelling and packing are best done at the factory.
Amazon's rules for inbound stock change often, so read its current seller guidance before you brief the supplier. The points below are the usual ones.
How do you ship jewellery to a 3PL or FBA warehouse?
Confirm who is importer of record and who will pay duty and tax at entry, whichever route you pick. A 3PL cannot receive goods that are held at the border, and a held shipment can run past a marketplace's inbound deadline. Speak to your broker before the supplier fixes the shipping date.
You are normally the importer of record, so you need your broker to clear the goods and your 3PL to receive them. There are two common routes:
- Ship the cartons from India to a 3PL near the port of entry, clear them, then let the 3PL prepare and forward units to FBA.
- Ship direct to the FBA inbound location named in your shipment plan, which needs the labels and cartons to meet Amazon's inbound rules from the start.
What prep should the factory do?
Prep that the factory does before shipping is cheaper and safer than prep done at a warehouse. Brief the supplier on:
- One unit per sellable item, in its own bag, pouch or box, so pieces do not tangle or scratch.
- A scannable barcode on each unit, matching your listing, with the label placed so it does not cover product information.
- Polybags with a suffocation warning, where the marketplace requires it for bag sizes above its threshold.
- Carton markings, piece counts and a packing list for each carton.
- Your name and address, or your responsible person's details, on the unit or pack where product rules require it.
What does the marketplace check?
Marketplaces can ask for test reports, descriptions and category approvals before you list jewellery. Fashion jewellery and fine jewellery are treated differently, and children's jewellery has stricter requirements. Our checklist is in marketplace jewellery compliance checks.
Expect the warehouse to reject units with missing or unreadable labels, damaged packs or mixed items in a carton. Ask the supplier to test-scan sample labels before the whole order is printed.
More on printed tags and barcodes is in barcode labels and hang tags printed in India.
Plan for the cost of prep as well. Every unit a warehouse bags, labels or repacks is paid for by you, so factory prep usually saves money as well as time. Ask your 3PL for its receiving requirements in writing, including carton size and weight limits, pallet rules and how it handles mixed cartons, and pass them to the supplier before packing starts.
Next step
Write a prep sheet for the supplier with the barcode, bag, carton and marking rules, and approve a packed sample before production ends. Check the first cartons against the sheet before you scale up.
If you want us to check packing against your prep sheet at the factory, book a free sourcing review.