Is Amazon MCF Right for Your CPG Brand?

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

Bessie Box, a retro cartoon shipping box character, holding a pink daisy and waving while wearing an Amazon-branded blue bow and tape, representing the MCF fulfillment decision facing CPG brands.

MCF is a rising tide no one really paid attention to.

200,000 sellers. 70% growth in off-Amazon orders. Now Walmart too.
Your DTC customer just received your product in an Amazon box.
Your best customers are still buying. Amazon just knows them better than you do.
The distribution case for CPG is real, but there’s a catch

Best Buds at your service, grappling with the blurred lines between Amazon and our favorite brands.

The Dark Horse Named MCF

Multi-Channel Fulfillment, AKA MCF, is Amazon's program that lets brands ship from Amazon's warehouses to your customers (direct and B2B). Your Shopify store, your wholesale accounts, wherever. The customer buys from you, Amazon stores, fulfills, ships, and delivers.

MCF has been around for years, quietly creeping in, like an uninvited guest. Certainly, you’ve noticed at some point that your DTC orders started arriving in Amazon boxes, and thought, “WTH.”

MCF now serves over 200,000 sellers in the U.S., with non-Amazon orders up 70% year-over-year. In 2025, Walmart opened its marketplace to MCF fulfillment, meaning a brand can now stock one pool of inventory and ship to Amazon customers, Walmart customers, and their own DTC customers from the Amazon network.

For an early-stage CPG brand without a 3PL relationship, without retail placement, without the volume to negotiate real freight rates, that is genuinely useful. Amazon built the logistics infrastructure and made it accessible to you.

Despite all that, Amazon is not for all. Bonobos, Nike, and IKEA all said no. Nearly every brand that exited Amazon did so because the channel conflict worked against them and the customer experience, including issues with Amazon undercutting their own prices, and returns resulting in inventory removals wreaking havoc on profitability. Ultimately, they bailed because they lost control of their biggest asset, the customer experience.

But those are apparel brands. The value proposition for CPG is different and undeniably shapes up to be quite advantageous for discoverability and convenience.

TBH, My Feelings On This Are A Mixed Bag

Amazon's labor record is documented. The warehouse conditions, the productivity quotas, and the worker injury rates are not fringe claims. Issues have been documented in congressional testimony and investigative reporting. For a founder who built a brand on values, routing orders through Amazon's fulfillment network is not a decision taken lightly.

I'm not here to make that call. But I will say, I’ve second-guessed brands when I have gone out of my way to purchase on their website, and end up receiving my order via Amazon anyway. It’s a slight breakdown in trust.

The Impossible Choice for CPG

But I get it. For consumables, food, supplements, personal care, and household items, refusing Amazon entirely is a harder call than the apparel exits make it look.

Apparel brands can build real DTC through community and owning their entire narrative via their website and digital feeds. The product buzz and social currency warrant a destination shopping experience. And more so, the enhanced CX and direct relationship is THE differentiating, value-forming, retention-locking framework that propels fashion brands forward. Amazon distribution compromises that.

However, let’s just say magnesium supplements, despite being a far more vital resource than a $120 dress, don’t earn the same romanticized devotion, no matter how good your Zennial branding game is. The customer who found you is likely searching for a category on Amazon, not your brand name on Google. If you haven’t earned their attention organically or beat out a paid algorithm, Amazon is where CPG discovery happens at volume. Refusing to be there means ceding that discovery to someone else.

And there you have it, a necessary evil with a less favorable margin.

So, Where Does That Leave You?

If you're a CPG brand, chances are you already have an presence on Amazon, FBM at minimum, plus a non-Amazon 3PL. MCF is the next logical step on paper. Centralized inventory, faster shipping, and one less vendor relationship to manage.

Here’s what I know. A real 3PL has an account manager you can call. A floor you can walk. A person who will do a quality check when something went wrong. Amazon is more like sending inventory into a black hole, you know it got there, but that's about where your control ends. Returns become removals. Goods aren't inspected. And for orders placed through your own site, you've handed over a critical piece of customer experience to a warehouse that doesn't know your brand exists.

Do your customers favor the speed and convenience of Amazon fulfillment?

Or would they rather remain in your orbit where a direct relationship locks in LTV?

Where does your “Open With Joy” moment land or fall through the cracks?

Ultimately, Amazon presents as a retailer and operates like a 3PL. Your product, your storage costs, your merchant fees, your fulfillment bill… and a competing product launching six months later with your own sales data. MCF is a decision, not a default. Know what you're renting vs growing.