Fancy peddling your wares in Canada or south of the border in Mexico?
Well, great news! Amazon has just made it incredibly easy to sell products from your US FBA inventory to the Canadian and Mexican markets.
Introducing the North America Remote Fulfillment program, or the charming-sounding, ‘NARF’, for short.
With a total of 165 million people (and wallets), the Canadian and Mexican markets should be places you want to be.
Previously, the complexity and cost of shipping goods from your Amazon.com store to Canada or Mexico would’ve put you off, but with the recent beta release of the NARF program, it just got a whole lot easier.
What is the NARF program?
When you sign up for the North America Remote Fulfillment (NARF) program, it displays your Amazon.com listings on both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.mx.
Shoppers in Canada and Mexico can now see your product at a price adjusted for import duties, and when they buy, Amazon will ship the item from your US-based inventory.
Why should you consider using NARF?
- It’s a low-risk way to test out new markets
Amazon is Mexico’s No.1 online retailer. And with a population of 126 million, it’s a real emerging market.
Although their country has a relatively small population, 36 million, Canadians LOVE to shop online, with Amazon being their first choice.
The NARF program is an easy and cheap way to get a piece of that pie.
- Any customs or duties are taken care of by Amazon
When you ship goods from the USA to Mexico or Canada, you often have to pay some kind of customs or duty fee. With the NARF program, you don’t have to do anything – Amazon will automatically work out the charges and add them to the price for you.
- Amazon PPC in Mexico is ludicrously cheap right now
Low-cost advertising means that now’s a wonderful time to get into the Mexican market.
There is an abundance of advertising space going begging on Amazon.com.mx so you can buy clicks very cheaply.
What you need to watch out for…
As with any opportunity, you need to be aware of a few things before you dive in headfirst.
Amazon will auto-translate your listing into Spanish for Mexico… and it’s not always good.
You can probably tell when something has been translated into English with Google, sometimes it just sounds ‘off’.
You want your product’s title, description, and any text in your images to sound as good to your Spanish-speaking audience as it does to your English, so pay to get it translated properly.
Look for translators on Upwork or Fiver, it shouldn’t cost you more than $10.
You can’t sell all products cross-border
Because of regulatory issues, you can’t sell all the products you list in the USA to other countries.
For example, you can’t sell topical products (creams, lotions etc.) in Canada using the NARF program. Turns out that Canada has more aggressive rules when it comes to what you can put on your skin than the USA – something I had no idea about before!
Check for customs and duties’ inconsistencies
Even though I said that Amazon’s NARF program sorts this out for you, I’ve noticed that some of my products have been overly expensive when they didn’t need to be.
It’s easy to check for yourself and is worthwhile doing so if you can knock off a few dollars.
That’s NARF in a nutshell! If you’re looking to get some of those Canadian Dollars or Mexican Pesos – and you should – then check out the Amazon’s NARF program.
If you have any questions about it, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you!
Virtual hugs and kisses!!
Stacey xx