Amazon will let sellers ship a single manufacturing run to one Amazon-operated facility near their factory and reach buyers in eight countries from that inbound shipment — with storage costs running up to 45% below its existing US bulk-storage program.

The service, Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD), connects to the US today and adds the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada by the end of the year, the company said Thursday. Once all eight markets are live, replenishment into Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) will run up to five days faster than under Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD), Amazon's US bulk-storage and auto-replenishment offering.

The mechanics matter for freight planners. Inventory sits in a single pool and moves to a specific country only when demand materializes there, then flows into local FBA fulfillment centers. That model replaces the country-by-country inbound pattern sellers previously needed — one consolidated drop-shipment near the point of manufacture instead of separate line-hauls into each destination market. For forwarders and consolidators serving Asia-based and North American exporters selling into Amazon's marketplace, that shifts cargo from multiple destination legs into one inbound movement deferred at an Amazon-controlled node.

GWD sits alongside AWD, which Amazon has already expanded beyond the US into the EU, the UK, and Australia. Amazon is also rolling out end-to-end supply chain visibility over the coming weeks: one interface tracks a shipment across Amazon-managed fulfillment from the moment the seller creates it, with a single reconciled unit count.

The commercial logic is straightforward. Only 30% of Amazon's selling partners list in more than one country, according to the company — and those that do earn 70% more revenue on average than single-market sellers. Amazon is engineering away the friction that keeps the other 70% domestic.

Compliance testing starts with toys

Sellers have told Amazon that compliance is the biggest barrier to international expansion, Sunny Jain, vice president of Worldwide Fulfillment by Amazon, wrote in a company blog post. Every country sets its own requirements for packaging, labeling, safety testing, and ingredient restrictions, and sellers have often worked them out only after the product was already manufactured. Going global, Jain wrote, meant "essentially starting a new business in each country."

Toy sellers now get a single specification for each destination country's testing, labeling, and packaging requirements. One test submission satisfies multiple countries' certification requirements, and existing certifications are recognized. Sellers in Amazon's pilot program for one-submission testing reported savings of up to 60% on compliance costs, the company said. Electronics and baby products follow by the end of the year. In 2027, Amazon plans to extend the approach to more categories and give sellers requirements and costs before they manufacture a single unit.

MORALVE, a family-run home organization company based in Canada, has already used the model to expand from the US into Canada, the UK, and Germany. "Being able to understand the requirements for each country and then use Amazon's logistics network to move inventory across multiple countries removed a lot of the complexity that traditionally comes with global expansion," co-founder Mo Kuhail said in Amazon's announcement.

Seller Central opens to eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart

In a separate post the same day, Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Experience, said the first version of Amazon's multichannel selling tools lets sellers connect eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart accounts to Seller Central, import and link off-Amazon listings, view sales and orders from those channels, and fulfill across them. The tools roll out gradually to sellers in the US store over the coming months at no additional cost.

The operational significance: orders placed on rival storefronts now route straight into Amazon's fulfillment network. On the Manage Orders page, a seller can select a Shopify order, fulfill it through Amazon, and tracking updates flow back to Shopify automatically. A profitability dashboard will pull sales, ad spend, and traffic from connected channels into one view.

More than 95% of independent sellers in Amazon's store already sell across multiple channels, the company said. "We have a team of three dedicated to reporting, and I'd estimate they spend about 5 hours at the end of each month to compile everything by logging into each channel individually," said Pamela Lee, director of digital operations at Elizabeth Mott, an Amazon selling partner.

Westmoreland wrote that Amazon is working toward Seller Central becoming "the single place where independent sellers manage their entire business, not just their Amazon listings, across every channel where they sell."

Taken together, the two announcements point to a company positioning its logistics network as the default fulfillment layer for cross-border e-commerce regardless of where the order originates — with GWD's single-pool inventory model live in the US now and seven more markets connected before year-end.