These are the results that ZonPrep's clients have actually seen, inbound time cuts, placement fee savings, and the downstream impact on in-stock rates and revenue. We share specifics because that's what $10M+ operators need to evaluate a new logistics partner.
A portfolio of brands moving up to 1M+ units a month, spread across a patchwork of small legacy providers with inventory tracked in a Google Sheet. Front Row consolidated all of it into one ZonPrep hub, domestic Amazon and export into FBA UK and Canada alike.
Front Row's prep didn't get chosen, it accumulated. In-house at first, then farmed out to small legacy providers with no contracts and limited system integration. Brands shipped direct to FBA out of their own buildings, with one person sometimes managing upwards of 18 shipping destinations. Item-level prep ran four to five days wall-to-wall, PO-to-received ran three to five weeks, and once a PO left the gate, visibility disappeared. A new VP of Logistics walked the legacy provider's floor, found conditions were not up to standard, gave them specific feedback, and watched none of it happen.
Everything ships to one dock. ZonPrep handles the splits, the labeling, and the freight out, and sends consolidated floor-loaded freight straight to regional fulfillment centers instead of dumping inventory into Amazon's National Cross Dock and eating the fee. A straight cross-dock is in one door and back out in about two days. The manual Google Sheet was replaced with an API integration ZonPrep built to Front Row's spec, giving them live PO visibility across the middle mile, which is what made it safe to pull weeks of buffer inventory out of the system. Value-added services cost fell roughly 27% per unit across the entire book of business.
"We really consider ZonPrep a fulfillment hub. Everything flows through there, and from there it goes everywhere else, domestically into Amazon, or we export into Canada or the UK."
"We've engaged multiple 3PL providers that do this work. Doing this work and doing this work right are far different things."
100,000 units a week. 4,500 active SKUs. Amazon Freight's largest East Coast shipper, and still waiting 30–40 days for inbound. ZonPrep eliminated placement fees and cut 14–20 days off their pipeline.
Monster Pets was shipping 100,000 units a week through Amazon's National Cross Dock network, and waiting 30+ days (sometimes 40+) for inventory to go Prime-eligible. At that volume, the lag was a structural drag on cash flow across thousands of SKUs. Placement fees were running into six figures in peak months. And the in-house prep line was heavy: pre-packaged shipments built from desks, buying new corrugated to ship product already in perfectly good manufacturer boxes.
Kayvon's pitch was specific: kill placement fees and collapse time-to-Prime. Monster Pets now sends optimized shipments to ZonPrep's Georgia hub, where they're consolidated and floor-loaded directly to Amazon's regional FCs, bypassing the slow, expensive cross-dock path. Owner Brian Fennel rebuilt his entire shipment-creation workflow around ZonPrep's process, hand scanners, floor-based labeling, manufacturer corrugated reuse, cutting prep supply costs by ~60%.
"I've reduced my placement fees pretty much to zero. That was Kayvon's original selling point, we have now proved that concept."
A supply chain professional who discovered that knowing supply chain and knowing Amazon's supply chain are two different jobs. Placement fees and slow Prime eligibility were shaping how they ran deals, how much inventory they committed, and how they planned tentpole events.
Two weeks from China to the port. Another two weeks from the port to the 3PL. Then one to two more weeks to reach Amazon. Upper Echelon had optimized every leg they controlled, and none of it settled the question that actually mattered: how long Amazon would take to receive the shipment once it landed. They had cycled through a freight forwarder, storing goods at a 3PL and shipping over, and direct import from supplier to Amazon. Then inbound placement fees arrived in 2024, and the cost of guessing went up.
Before changing anything operationally, Kayvon and the team walked Upper Echelon through how Amazon's inbound distribution actually routes product, and where the time was really going. That reframed the problem: the bottleneck was never ocean transit, it was Prime eligibility. Upper Echelon now runs inbound through ZonPrep's Georgia hub, and reports time to Prime in the range of six to ten days.
"I like ZonPrep because they know what they're doing. They get stuff done. They don't make excuses. They teach you. They're with you every step of the way. And most importantly, they allow you to focus on your core competencies."
Time to Prime eligibility figures are based on actual shipment data from current ZonPrep clients, tracked and verified by our team. Individual results may vary based on product category, shipment volume, and Amazon receiving conditions.