What is the Amazon Haul Program?

For months, there were stories leaking out of China that a new Temu-like shopping experience was going to be released by Amazon. Some things from the leaks were true (low cost products shipped direct from China), but many things were false (there are no $20 sofas as rumored). 

Finally, Amazon Haul has been launched. In this deep dive we will go over:

1. An Overview of the Amazon Haul Shopping Experience
2. What kind of products are on Amazon Haul?
3. A walkthrough of an actual Amazon Haul order all the way to delivery and unboxing
4. How Amazon Haul affects current Amazon Sellers
5. Who can sell products on Amazon Haul?

What is the difference of Amazon Haul and the regular Amazon website?

As mentioned, Amazon Haul is a low cost program that has products that are priced $20 and under, with direct shipments from China, not Amazon Prime. 

The Amazon Haul shopping experience currently is completely separate from shopping for regular Amazon products…it even has its own sub section.   You can only shop Amazon Haul using the Amazon mobile app, or using a mobile browser and going to amazon.com/haul

Since this program is only in beta, there is a limited number of products available in a limited number of categories, compared to the 30+ categories with countless subcategories and 300 million products available in the Amazon marketplace. There are currently only 9 categories and a limited number of subcategories on Haul.

The biggest difference with Haul products other than the fact that they all ship from China,  is the price point.  Not only are all products under $20, but the majority of them are under $10, with some even being as cheap at $0.99 with shipping!

If you only buy one product though, the price of shipping is a very affordable $3.99.

However, as you add products to your cart, you will get a message saying how far away you are from $25…the threshold for free shipping.

Here is a walkthrough of a purchase I did as soon as Haul released!   The first thing I searched for was a phone stand for my desk and this is what I found.

The first thing I noticed was how the main image did not have a white background, like is the requirement on Amazon.  I do see a large number of items without the pure white background.   Of course, that is the Amazon Seller me who noticed that.  The Amazon buyer me went straight to that crazy $3.99 price!

More unique things about this listing and others is the fact that there are NO bullet points or description!  The only thing that will allow you seemingly to search for this product is the text in the title!  As you can see, from the first thing I added to my cart, I was incentivized to add more to my cart to get free shipping, so that is what I did. Funny thing though, as soon as I hit the $25 threshold, now I was being told to add ANOTHER $25 to the shopping cart to save $5%.  No thank you Amazon Haul…..I already bought another 4 things I didn’t really need just to hit $25!

I placed the order the night of November 14, and by the next morning I already had a text message from Amazon saying that it shipped, and that I could expect it in 10 days, on November 25.  To me, that wasn’t ideal….I’m used to 0-2 day shipping from Prime, plus I was going on another trip on the 23rd, so figured I might miss this package. 

Orders for Amazon Haul can be seen in your regular orders section of the mobile App.  A day after the product shipped, when I checked the orders page, there was already a new delivery estimate of November 19-22!

Sure enough the product delivered via carrier on Wednesday the 20th….only 5 and a half days after I ordered it!  I got a text message from a delivery company called “UniUni” which seems to be a last mile delivery company.   Curious about how it could have delivered so fast, I went to check the Amazon tracking of its journey. 

The first couple of interesting things is that it shipped SO FAST from when I ordered it. Also, as you can see, ALL products which were from all different companies, were shipped at the same time, from the same place.  

The next couple of days were even more eye opening.  It arrived pretty fast in the USA, by Sunday night.   How long did it take to clear customs?  ONE MINUTE!!!!  That’s INSANE!  For those of us who import in bulk from China, we know the customs clearance can take days or sometimes even weeks.   The fact that these shipments can clear customs in one minute is pretty wild!

All of the products came in a small brown Amazon branded bag.  The items packaging was in rough shape, but nothing was damaged.  The quality of the products is kind of what you’d expect from like the dollar store…nothing terrible, nothing amazing. 

Like products that come from Amazon Prime, they had “FNSKU” barcode stickers on them.  

Would I buy from it again? Maybe.  Its hard to find products I really need on there due to the low number of products available, and theres an inherent feeling that the products there are lower quality, so I am a bit reluctant to purchase them, especially since now there are so few products that even have reviews to give me that social proof. 

Will Amazon Haul take away sales from regular Amazon products? For now, I do not think so, unless you are already a seller from China selling cheaper products. I don’t think the average Amazon customer is going to switch ordering to this site…I think many of the customers for haul will be like me….curious to see what its about, and then buying a bunch of things I probably wouldn’t have bought on Amazon anyway.  Nothing I bought above I really “needed.”  I only bought it because I wanted to test haul out, and get to that $25 pricepoint.

Since then I have needed other products, and I have only gone directly to the regular Amazon store to purchase them. I did not think that anything I needed would have been available on Haul for me. 

Even though you can’t normally shop on a desktop website with Amazon Haul, you can “share” the link from the mobile browser, and then go to the link on the desktop.  Interestingly, when I did that on a product that was a “hot seller,” somehow the free Helium 10 Chrome Extension  was able to pick up an Amazon Best Seller Rating from it, so I could estimate how many sales it had. (every dip in BSR might correspond to sales).

Most other products though did not seem to have a trackable BSR.  

Another interesting thing was that 100% of the sellers on Amazon Haul that I checked all ALSO had existing stores on Amazon’s regular marketplace:

However, something quite surprising to me was almost ALL of the sellers who had products in Haul and in a regular Amazon store did not have the SAME products in both.  I used Helium 10 Black Box, which is a database of over 2 billion Amazon products in all marketplaces to search for the catalog of the Haul Sellers for their Amazon FBA products, and found that almost all did not sell the same products!

I did find similar products though from different companies.  For example, check out these resistance bands on Amazon Haul for $3.99:

First of all, one more thing I discovered.  Remember how I said that on Amazon Haul, there were no bullet points?  The interesting thing is that when you take the mobile listing, and put it on desktop, bullet points miraculously appear….so perhaps these are just hidden on mobile.    By any means, I found an identical product on Amazon from a different seller….almost the same images:

It just so happens that the price for the product was the SAME as Haul!  $3.99 due to a black friday deal…yet with FREE shipping and Prime delivery!

On Another similar product, you can clearly tell that the seller of this product is probably the same, despite having different seller accounts, and they are using AI to change the models in the images.  Look at these two lifestyle images in the two listings, one from Haul, and one from Amazon Prime!    Was the AI prompt “take this image and reproduce it by changing the models to have messy hair as if they just got out of bed?” 

The only seller I could find that was selling the identical product on both Amazon Haul and Amazon FBA was Benecreat.  Their price on Amazon via prime is $8.89.  Their price on Haul is $5.59.  

Which would you buy?  The $5.59 version that youd have to pay almost $10 for with shipping unless you buy $25 worth of product, and wait 1 week for shipping? Or the Amazon Prime $8.89 version that could be delivered tomorrow?  In this case, its a no brainer. 

What does Amazon Haul mean for US Based Sellers?

A hot question is if Amazon Haul will open up to US Based sellers who have factories in China, and the ability to send product to the Amazon Haul warehouses.   I for one would love to try out the program. 

The way I would use it is if I was selling a smaller product that qualifies for the program, It would be a great way to test demand without having to invest too much money in something that I wasn’t sure would be successful.  It would also be a way potentially for me to have cashflow on smaller margin products that I did not have to have much in stock of. (many of the Haul products seemingly have less than 10 units of inventory in stock)

In one of my Amazon accounts, I sell paper straws for under $10.  So far I have not seen any paper straw sellers eating into my market share with Haul.  Almost all of my other products are larger and more expensive, so I do not even view Haul products as any sort of competition to me.  

What about those of you selling in categories like clothing? Have you seen any differences in your orders after Haul released?  

Will the rumored moves by the US government to shut down the loopholes that Amazon Haul and Temu and Shein use to by pass custom tax on small orders with direct shipping ever happen? If so, what happens to sites like Amazon Haul?   Time will tell, but for now, its wait and see how this turns out for both buyers and sellers!

For me, the best way to make money on Amazon still is by selling private label with Amazon FBA, plus for ones without much capital, being an Amazon influencer by reviewing products.   To learn more about how to start these businesses, make sure to check out our Freedom Ticket Training program that gives you the step by step process!

If Haul becomes more of a thing, I guess we will have to add an Amazon Haul course as well to Freedom Ticket!

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