The New Rules of Amazon 1P Strategy in 2025: What It Means for Vendors

Amazon’s 1P program once gave vendors scale, support, and consistency. In 2025, it’s become more fragmented—with tighter margins, slower POs, and growing vendor frustration. Here’s what’s changing and how brands are adapting.

Why 1P Is Getting Harder in 2025

• Purchase Order delays now extend 30–60 days for many vendors

• Chargeback penalties are up 20% year-over-year

• Vendor Central support tickets often go unanswered for weeks

• New vendors face stricter onboarding and content approvals

  
  

What’s Causing the Shift?

• Amazon is tightening 1P spend to improve margins

• Automated PO forecasting is misfiring more frequently

• More brands are moving to 3P and hybrid, so 1P gets deprioritized

  
  

Amazon 1P Strategy 2025: What Brands Are Doing Instead

• Switching to hybrid models: keeping high-volume SKUs in 1P, launching new ones in 3P

• Using growth partners to handle messy backend work (chargebacks, setup, updates)

• Negotiating shorter PO cycles and lighter MOQ contracts

  
  

Why Fifth Shelf Supports Both 1P and 3P

• We manage 1P setup, onboarding, and negotiation (CSP)

• We can shift inventory into 3P and FBA instantly (DWP)

• We handle logistics, content, ad strategy, and chargeback recovery

  
  

TL;DR for Operators

If you’re tired of:

• Long PO delays

• Surprise deductions

• Inconsistent communication

  
  

You don’t need to abandon 1P—but you do need a smarter setup.

Talk to us → about hybrid growth.

• Learn more about DWP

• Learn how CSP supports 1P setup

• Read our DWP vs CSP comparison