McDONOUGH, GA – With Amazon exiting the FBA prep business effective January 2026, online sellers will be taking on more responsibility than ever. While the Amazon decision was not unexpected, it increases the burden on sellers and forces them to up their level of operational excellence.
“With Amazon exiting FBA prep, it dumps the entire prep responsibility back onto sellers,” says Lou Casados, head of Sales at ZonPrep (an exhibitor at Prosper 2026). “Every bubble wrap bottle, every polybag, every shrink wrap two pack, every compliance requirement will now be the responsibility of the seller—or their liability. Sellers that are not built for that level of operational rigor and scale will need a partner.”
Prosper Pathway sat down with Casados to learn more about Denver-based ZonPrep and the role of third party logistics (3PL) in a fast-changing Amazon world.
Prosper Pathway: How would you describe ZonPrep?
Casados: We are a 3PL, but we are not a traditional 3PL—meaning we don’t typically store and hold inventory for our clients. We focus exclusively on the Amazon channel because that is where the majority of sales are coming from for most brands and sellers today. We get sellers into Amazon in 24 to 48 hours. We eliminate placement fees and maintain a 99.9% QA compliance rating with our prep clients. We run 30-plus trucks daily to Amazon regional fulfillment centers, which means faster prime eligibility and less storage drag, and more profitable quarters for our clients.
Prosper Pathway: How much will Amazon’s exit from FBA prep affect sellers?
Casados: It’s going to be a big shift for a lot of sellers, but we’re here to help folks who need a 3PL that knows how to do prep with precision, speed, and cost efficiency. We get products into FBA faster than anyone else. The nice thing is you can turn ZonPrep on really quick. That deadline is coming up at the beginning of January, but as long as we have a conversation by December, there’s plenty of time.
Prosper Pathway: What type of sellers are typically coming to you?
Casados: As much as we’d love to be able to service everybody, we are just not built for everyone. The sellers who are going to most benefit from our services are higher-volume shippers, meaning they’re sending at least two full truckloads per month of inventory into Amazon FBA. Also, anyone who needs FBA prep on at least 35,000 units monthly are going to be the clients who get the most amount of value from our services. Clients who are primarily focused on shipping standard-size items will get the biggest speed benefits with us as well.
Prosper Pathway: What is the biggest misconception about FBA prep?
Casados: The biggest misconception about FBA prep is that it’s just slapping a label on a box. In reality, prep is about QA compliance, avoiding chargebacks, optimizing your shipments, and optimizing the way that you’re prepping your products.
Prosper Pathway: Can you share an example?
Casados: A lot of clients will use poly bags as their primary prep mode, and in reality they’re overpaying because of that strategy—because there’s two to six inches of slack that is left in the poly bag. All of that weight and dimension is ultimately counted against you in FBA, and that’s charged at a different rate than if you shrunk-wrap that package. You’d be paying less in fees. That’s just one example of how sloppy prep, or not understanding the complexities of prep can actually eat into your P&L on a consistent basis. If you treat prep like a commodity, you’re going to pay for it in delays, in penalties, and in many different ways.
Prosper Pathway: What’s your level of optimism about the future of online selling these days?
Casados: We’re only at the beginning of what e-commerce and digital is going to look like. Consumers are not buying less. They’re just buying smarter. Sellers who understand cost control, speed to Prime, and customer experience are going to grow, even in down markets. The ones who ignore those levers are going to get squeezed out as they always have.
Prosper Pathway: What’s your optimism about Amazon in particular?
Casados: The Amazon marketplace keeps getting bigger—and now with multichannel fulfillment into Walmart, Shein, and others, it’s clear marketplace strategies are only gaining momentum. At ZonPrep, we exist to make sure the right brands can capture that growth by unlocking operational efficiencies and cost savings on the Amazon channel.
Recent Comments