20/08/2026
WAIT⦠THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS WE NEED TO SEPARATE HERE. šš½
A lot of people hear āstore your inventory outside Amazonā and immediately think, āOh, sheās saying I should do FBM.ā
No. ā
These are two completely different decisions.
1ļøā£ WHERE DO YOU STORE YOUR INVENTORY?
You can be 100% FBA and still store some of your inventory outside Amazon.
For example, your supplier in China has a MOQ of 5,000 units, but you know you wonāt sell 5,000 units anytime soon.
Instead of sending all 5,000 units to Amazon and paying Amazon to store inventory you donāt need yet, you could:
š¦ Send an appropriate quantity to Amazon for FBA
š¢ Store the remaining inventory in a cheaper warehouse/storage facility closer to you or closer to Amazon
š Replenish your Amazon FBA inventory from there as you sell
Youāre STILL 100% FBA.
Youāre simply managing your inventory intelligently.
This can also make sense when you want to hold more stock closer to Amazon so you can replenish quickly and reduce the risk of running out of stock, rather than waiting for another shipment from China.
2ļøā£ THEN THEREāS FBA vs FBM
This is a completely separate decision.
FBA: Amazon fulfils the customer order for you.
FBM: You or a third-party fulfilment centre fulfils the customer order.
There are situations where FBM can make sense, particularly for certain heavy, bulky, low-margin or otherwise expensive-to-fulfil products.
But you can absolutely have:
External storage + FBA
without doing FBM at all.
So please donāt confuse āwhere I store my inventoryā with āwho fulfils my customerās order.ā
And this is exactly why I always tell my students:
Donāt just follow what everyone else is doing. Understand your numbers and make the decision that makes sense for YOUR business.
If you want to learn Amazon properlyāfrom product research and sourcing to inventory planning, launching and scalingā
Join Sell Like a Boss Academy. š
Comment āCommunity ā or click the link in my bio to join us.