Peak starts in eight days

At its Accelerate seller conference in Seattle, Amazon began rolling out tools that let a seller connect their eBay, Shopify, TikTok Shop, and Walmart accounts to Seller Central, import those listings, view orders from all channels in a single dashboard, and ship all orders through Multi-Channel Fulfillment. U.S. sellers get it gradually, and it costs nothing extra.

The same day, MCF orders on a merchant's own website can now carry the Prime badge at no additional cost beyond the normal MCF fee, with Amazon checking the shopper's Prime membership before shipping. Amazon says more than 40% of eligible orders from early users were shipped via Prime delivery. A new preferred pricing program also takes 15% to 25% off MCF fees for an FBA seller's first six months, with no long-term contract. It plugs into Shopify through Amazon's existing app.

Amazon makes no money off the dashboard itself. Marketplace Pulse points out that 95% of Amazon sellers already sell on more than one channel, while 71% still get three-quarters of their marketplace revenue from Amazon. The takeaway is that Amazon cares more about owning the hub than about how a seller's revenue splits across the spokes. Once a brand's Walmart and Shopify orders appear on the same screen as its Amazon orders, next to a button that ships them from inventory already in an FBA building, the 3PL handling the non-Amazon side has to explain why the second contract is still worth it. Mary Beth Westmoreland, who runs the seller experience, told GeekWire that Amazon will "never, ever" use off-Amazon sales data for anything other than showing it back to the seller.

Global Warehousing and Distribution, the service behind the Shenzhen facility Amazon opened in April, lets a seller send one production batch to an Amazon building near the factory and have Amazon split it across countries based on demand. It feeds the U.S. today and will add the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada by year-end, with storage prices up to 45% below its U.’s U.S. AWD service. Seller Assistant is getting AI agents for inbound planning and aged inventory on top of that.

What this means for you: If you fulfill Shopify or Walmart orders for a brand that also runs FBA, expect them to see this pricing before Q1, and put your all-in cost per order next to MCF's before they do, including what MCF costs in month seven once the discount runs out. Lead with the work that needs your people: custom kitting, inserts, wholesale and retail orders, and returns you inspect and put back on the shelf. Some brands won't love routing their Walmart and TikTok numbers through Amazon's software regardless of the promise, and a neutral 3PL is an easy sell to them. And if you do prep or overflow for China-based sellers, watch Global Warehousing and Distribution closely, because inventory that gets split up in Shenzhen never shows up on your dock as a full container.

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Xi Jinping spent September 23 through 26 in Washington, and the two governments emerged with a deal to cut tariffs on $30 billion worth of each other's goods. The product lists came out over the weekend. The U.S. side covers 77 categories of Chinese goods, including fireworks, tableware, blankets, bed linens, high chairs, child car seats, dolls, puzzles, soccer balls, and glass and wooden Christmas ornaments. More than 90% of those items drop to most-favored-nation rates, the standard WTO rates that usually land in the single digits, while semiconductors, EVs, and batteries were kept off entirely.

The cuts take effect once both countries complete their domestic legal procedures, and no one has set a date for that. On the first day of the summit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News that the broader truce, which sets the fentanyl tariff at 10% and suspends the Section 301 investigation into China's shipping and logistics sector, now runs through January 10 rather than November 10.

FreightWaves had China to the West Coast at $8,446 per forty-foot container, close to four times what it cost last September, while China to the Mediterranean fell to $3,591, half its July peak. Carriers blanked nine sailings in a single week, typhoons have been clogging Chinese ports since mid-July, Hormuz has pushed up bunker fuel, and only 29% of vessels arrived on time in August. Freightos has the East Coast lane flat around $9,600, and FreightWaves expects another push before China's Golden Week holiday in early October.

What this means for you: Ask your toy, home goods, and holiday clients whether they're holding purchase orders until the lower rate kicks in, because orders that get pushed to catch it will all land together once a date is set, and you want that in your receiving plan instead of finding out from a stack of ASNs. Don't let anyone build 2027 storage or handling pricing around savings that haven't been published yet. With less than a third of vessels on time, Q4 inbound will miss appointments. Reread what your contracts say about late and missed deliveries before November. And keep January 10 on the calendar, since the truce expires right as your returns season peaks.

Adobe released its holiday forecast this morning. It expects $275.1 billion in U.S. online spending from November 1 through December 31, up 6.7%, with Cyber Monday the biggest day at $15.1 billion and Black Friday at $12.9 billion. October alone is forecast at $95.8 billion, up 8%, a faster growth rate than the holiday season itself and about double the $47.5 billion Adobe expects for the five days of Cyber Week. Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days on October 6 and 7 account for $9.9 billion of it, up 9.2%, and that event starts eight days from now.

Grocery is the fastest-growing category online at $26.1 billion, up 10.3%, followed by toys at 9.6% and cosmetics at 9.5%. Electronics is still the biggest at $63.3 billion, but it's growing 5.9%, and apparel is growing 4.7%. The best discounts on TVs, toys, apparel, appliances, and furniture are expected on Black Friday, and on electronics and computers on Cyber Monday.

Adobe expects shoppers to use Cyber Week to stock up on basics, with clothing basics up 210% over September levels, personal hygiene up 150%, baby products up 113%, pet products up 93%, and household cleaning up 49%.

What this means for you: Staff for October 6, not the Monday before Thanksgiving, because the Prime event and the rest of October carry nearly twice the Cyber Week dollars. Call your consumables clients now about how deep their Cyber Week inventory is, since a basics SKU that sells 3x its normal rate for five days can't be restocked from overseas in time. Move those SKUs into your fastest-pick locations before November, not during November. If you handle food-grade or grocery, a 10% growth forecast is the strongest, so plan your receiving capacity accordingly.

FUEL
Diesel hit a record $6.529 per gallon, and Washington is debating whether to halt exports. The EIA's September 21 print added 24.4 cents in a week and sits $2.78 above last year, with the Midwest up 43 cents to $6.680 and California at $8.246. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil executives on September 22 to prepare for possible export curbs, and the White House has been weighing a 90-day halt. Wright says nobody wants a blanket ban; Treasury reportedly opposes one; Agriculture supports it; and oil executives warned it would backfire after a short dip. Your parcel fuel surcharges follow the weekly DOE number, so budget October invoices at today's price and treat any relief as a bonus.

INVENTORY
The share of small businesses sitting on more than 10% dead stock has doubled since 2024. That's from Netstock's benchmark of more than 2,500 customers, published September 24, which also found that nearly 75% of SMBs are struggling with lead-time swings and 60% are stuck with supplier minimum order quantities. It's a vendor report, so weight it accordingly. Dead stock lives on your racks, collecting storage fees until the client either pays to liquidate it or stops paying the invoice. Pull your aging report for anything with no picks in 180 days and have the conversation before peak needs the space.

If liquidation is the only option you offer, Stock is worth a look: it's a marketplace where brands and 3PLs list excess inventory for donation to nonprofits, so the client gets a tax write-off, and you get the pallet positions back. Its founder says donated goods leave the building in under 5 days, compared with roughly 16 weeks for a typical liquidation. Book a call with the founder here.

NEARSHORING
Lego is putting more than $400 million into a fully automated high-bay warehouse and packing hall in Monterrey. Announced on September 24, the expansion will raise the plant's capacity by 35%, add about 1,300 jobs through 2029, and begin construction in early 2027. Monterrey already serves the whole Americas, and Lego has more than $1.5 billion invested in a Virginia manufacturing facility that opens in 2027. Every plant built this way moves a share of North American supply from containers at the ports to trucks and rail that cross the Texas border, and warehouses along that corridor pick up the work.

AUTONOMY
Aurora told investors it wants more than 30,000 driverless trucks running by 2030. It expects to have 200 on the road by the end of this year, with Dallas to Houston as its main lane, with more than 500,000 driverless miles done. Hirschbach plans to own and operate 500 of them, with deliveries starting in 2027, and Aurora says its trucks average more than 225,000 miles a year, more than twice that of a conventional truck. A truck that runs that much needs a dock that can turn it at 2 a.m., so if you run a DC in Texas, the shippers moving to these lanes will favor yards that already run nights.

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