Shipping from China to Amazon FBA
Getting goods from a Chinese factory into an FBA warehouse is a freight problem with a compliance problem attached. The freight part is ordinary. The part that goes wrong is labelling, appointments and paperwork that Amazon rejects on arrival, when the goods are already in the country and your options are expensive.
- Air and sea quoted side by side per shipment
- FBA labelling and carton requirements handled at origin
- Delivery appointments booked into the destination FC
- We say plainly what we do not do
What we do not do, first
Neofulfill does not run a prep centre in the United States. If your goods need US-side prep — polybagging, bundling, relabelling or inspection after they land — that is a separate provider and we will say so rather than implying otherwise.
We say it first because the search results for FBA prep are almost entirely US warehouses, and a China-based operation claiming to compete there would be misleading you about something you can verify in an afternoon. What we do is get the goods there, prepped at origin, in a state FBA accepts.
Prep at origin versus prep in the US
Most FBA prep work can be done at the factory or at our warehouse in Shenzhen, before the goods ever move. Doing it there is cheaper, because labour costs less and you are not paying to handle the same carton twice, and it is faster, because nothing waits in a queue after arrival.
| Prep step | Can be done at origin | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| FNSKU labels | Yes | A missing label is a rejected shipment |
| Polybagging and suffocation warnings | Yes | Required per category |
| Bundling and multipacks | Yes | Must match the listing exactly |
| Carton labelling and weights | Yes | Wrong weights cause receiving delays |
| Inspection against the spec | Yes | The only cheap place to find a defect |
| Relabelling after a listing change | No, too late | This is US-side prep work |
The four things that get FBA shipments rejected
Wrong FNSKU, unreadable barcode, or a label under shrink wrap
Weight and dimension caps that vary and are enforced
A delivery without one is turned away at the gate
Importer of record and customs entry in the wrong name
Arriving into a restock limit you have already hit
Who is the importer of record
This is the decision most sellers make by accident. Amazon is not the importer of record for your goods and will not act as one. It has to be you, or a customs broker acting for you, and getting that wrong is the difference between a clean entry and goods held at the port.
We quote DDP where it is available, which puts the duty and clearance on the shipment rather than on you at the far end. Whether that is the right call depends on your volume and on whether you want the entry in your own name — how DDP works sets out the trade.
Air or sea into FBA
The same value-per-kilogram test as any other freight decision, with one addition: FBA restock limits mean goods arriving early sit in a queue rather than selling, so the fastest option is not automatically the best one.
For a launch or an urgent restock of a proven ASIN, air. For a planned replenishment where you know the sell-through, sea, booked back from the date you need it on the shelf. Air freight from China covers how chargeable weight sets the bill, and air and sea freight puts the modes side by side.
Running FBA and your own store together
Most sellers who ship into FBA also sell somewhere else, and the two are usually run as separate supply chains for no reason other than habit. One production order can be split at our warehouse: the FBA portion prepped, labelled and freighted in bulk, the rest held and shipped per order to your own store's customers.
That keeps one supplier relationship, one inspection step and one stock position behind both channels. Dropshipping fulfillment is the per-order half of it.
China to Amazon FBA FAQs
Can you ship directly from China to an Amazon FBA warehouse?
Do you offer Amazon FBA prep in the US?
Who is the importer of record for FBA shipments?
Should I use air or sea freight for FBA?
What happens if Amazon rejects the shipment?
Can you handle FBA and my own store from the same stock?
Ready to hand over fulfillment?
Tell us your daily order volume and main markets. We come back with the routes and the per-order price your actual profile needs.