Fulfillment · June 22, 2026
From the container at the port to a compliant carton at the fulfillment center — without a middleman in between.
If you import through the Ports of Seattle or Tacoma and sell on Amazon, there's a step that quietly decides your timeline and your fees: FBA prep. Get it wrong and shipments get refused at the fulfillment center; get it right and your inventory is sellable days sooner. Doing that prep close to the port — instead of trucking boxes to a separate prep house — is where Northwest sellers save the most time.
Amazon has specific rules for how units arrive at its fulfillment centers. Prep is everything that gets your freight to meet them: receiving and counting the import, inspecting for damage, applying FNSKU labels, poly-bagging or bundling where required, meeting carton weight and labeling standards, and building the shipment to Amazon's plan. Miss a requirement and the FC charges you for it — or rejects the shipment.
The faster path is: container off the terminal, straight to a 3PL that receives it, preps it, and forwards it to the right fulfillment centers. We pull your box off Seattle or Tacoma with our own drayage, unload it at our Kent facility, and run the prep and fulfillment in the same building. No extra leg to a prep vendor, no double handling, and the units ship to Amazon on your schedule.
FBA storage limits and IPI scores mean you often don't want every unit going to Amazon at once. We hold the overflow — at our Kent hub or with our partner Long Road Warehouse — and release shipments as your sell-through and storage limits allow. Sellers like PartStop use the same model: receive the import once, prep it, and meter it out to the channel instead of paying peak storage fees up front.
Yes — we dray the container off Seattle or Tacoma, receive and inspect it, apply FNSKU labels and required prep, and forward compliant cartons to the fulfillment centers, all from our Kent 3PL.
Yes — FNSKU labeling, poly-bagging, bundling and carton prep to Amazon's current requirements.
Yes — we hold your inventory and release shipments on your cadence so you manage storage limits and IPI instead of sending everything at once.
Prepping at a port-adjacent 3PL removes an extra truck leg and a handoff — the container is received and prepped in one place, so units are sellable sooner.