Want Your Own Amazon FBA Business Warehouse? (This COULD Be The Strategy For You)

One of the goals which you may have in your Amazon FBA business is getting into a warehouse of your own, to expand your business from your living room, kitchen or hallway, into your own unit, where you have the ability to build onto your own blank canvas - hire staff members or ship thousands of products every day, this blog post is going to share with you Kev's advice on how you can make this a reality. Depending on where you are at right now, there are going to be lots of different factors on at what point is the right time to move into a warehouse.

Since 2016, Kev moved into his own warehouse in the June. It was an amazing time, it was an exciting time, it was a nerve-wracking time - to be able to move your business from your living room into a warehouse. Kev has expanded and introduced other businesses into his operations, which allowed Kev to move into an even bigger warehouse.

So, there is a lot of potential once you are in your own unit - to be able to hire staff members, to be able to build your own systems and processes from nothing, to invest in equipment and resources, and different tools which you may need to build your eCommerce business, to expand from FBA to FBM to your own wholesale business, and everything that comes along with it.

So, I am going to dissect a lot in this blog post, and specifically recommend something which you may want to use to get you to where you want to be, and that is a warehouse.

 When To Get Your Own Warehouse

When it comes to starting your Amazon FBA business and you are just getting going, you've got some specific milestones - you may want to quit your job, and build your business to the point where you are able to quit your job.

Once you have quit your job, you may want to get yourself into your own unit, you may want to hire staff members, you may want to hire virtual assistants, and all of these things that make this business so exciting and so fulfilling. 

This is an exciting time and an exciting process when you are just getting started; however, how do you bridge the gap from home to warehouse? There are a lot of things which you can do.

For Kev and Kylie, they went absolutely all in, trying to source as many products as they possibly could, whether that was from their online arbitrage business, expanding into wholesale, looking at opening wholesale accounts, and really trying to build their business from where they were at, and that was from home and their living room, their dining room. Kev and Kylie were shipping, sourcing and doing absolutely everything they possibly could.

Kev got to the point, which he calls the champagne problem, where the operations were just too big to be in their living room, so they then started to look for their warehouse.

Finding A Warehouse

Depending on your location, there are going to be different factors which you may want to consider. In many ways where you can find a potential warehouse, you may want to drive around your own local area, trying to find those industrial units which are empty; making some phone call, asking people if they know where any units are, or you may even want to look online at the warehouses to rent. 

Watch the video below where Kev shares the secrets of a warehouse:

Cost

There are lots of considerations you make while looking for a warehouse. You need to consider the cost of the warehouse which is subjective based on your location. You may be right now somewhere where it is super expensive. Here, where Kev is based, the warehouses were relatively cheap back in 2016, and in some places in some major cities, you can't get the warehouses which Kev has in his town, because they are just a small industrial town, where there are a lot of cheaper warehouses. You may be right in the middle of the city, where the real estate, the actual warehouse is just really expensive, then you have got all the rates to consider, depending on the size of your warehouse, it may be business rates, all the utilities in terms of electricity, all the security aspect, the insurance aspect, you have got so many different things to consider, not to mention the health and safety aspect, the hiring of staff aspect, the HR aspect, the payroll, the pensions, and all these things to consider.

The first thing for you to do is for you to think about a warehouse scenario, where you are getting all these factors into place. Work out how much it would actually cost for you to get into a warehouse, what profitability in your business do you need to build to? How many units do you need to be shipping? What ultimately does your business need to look like, for you to put the investment into a warehouse, for you to actually take that leap?

FBA Prep Services

And this is why, one of the things Kev has experienced as part of his Amazon FBA business, is he has had a number of partners over the last 4 years, and they have had 4 partners whose steppingstone may be moving into a prep service first.

 The leap from your home to a warehouse could be a significant leap. So, one of the things which is a steppingstone, could be a prep service.

Because Kev's an owner of an FBA prep service, he has seen the result people have had by using one, because you are practically getting a warehouse and a team, for your warehouse as an asset for you, without the actual expense of making the leap into a warehouse.

Benefits Of A Prep Service

There are many benefits to it. Immediately you have access to all their resources, their tools, their teams, and you don't have to even think about spending money on the warehouse, the staff, the payroll, and the pensions. 

You don't have to think about hiring staff members and training staff members. So, one of the easiest things that you could do, when you are thinking about building your business, where you have more time to actually build it. The most time-consuming aspect of your entire Amazon FBA business may be the fact that you have to prep all of your products yourself. You are the one who has to get all your products in, you have to prep everything, and it may be taking you up to 6 hours a day to get yourself into some time to work on your business again. So, by eliminating them hours, and outsourcing it to a prep service, a quality prep service, it will allow you to expand your business to the next level. This is one of the reasons why our prep service has introduced a number of really beneficial things, which promotes you to grow. This is one of the reasons why we have had 3 people who have joined us and quadrupled their business, 10x their business - they have gone from shipping a thousand products in a month, up to 12 thousands units in a month, to get to the point to bridge that gap.

After you have then scaled your business with a prep service, then you can start thinking about making that jump into your own warehouse.

If you are in a situation where you can get out into a unit within your grasp, the gap between your house, where you want to be your own units, if that is in distance, then you should make that leap. But if it's not, and you then have to build your business, and you have to scale your operations even further, one of the strategies could genuinely just be signing up to a prep service. This could be a real solution to what you're particularly interested in. 

If you are interested in a warehouse, it is about understanding what the real costs are in the warehouse, what does your business need to look like for you to be able to afford that. 

If it's possible for you to scale to a point where you are so busy at your house, your revenue grows, your profitability grows that you can afford that, and it is actually within your grasp then go for it. But if it's not, if right now, you are looking and it is going to cost a lot for you, then you may want to make that short term sacrifice, and go to prep service, then once you are ready, you can then go into your own warehouse.

Watch the video below where Kev talks about 30 honest pros and cons of using a prep service:

Further reading:

How To Be A Leader In Your Business (Best Tips For Entrepreneurs)

Kev's Honest Thoughts On Amazon FBA in 2021

How To Build Systems In Your Business