AVS (Amazon Vendor Services)

AVS (Amazon Vendor Services) is Amazon’s paid, invitation-only account-management program for 1P vendors, distinct from Alexa Voice Service, the unrelated Amazon developer platform that shares the same abbreviation.

What it is

AVS is a paid layer of account management that Amazon sells on top of the standard vendor relationship. Amazon launched it in the EU in 2013 as Strategic Vendor Services (SVS) and renamed it later, so the two names point at the same program.

You cannot enroll yourself. Amazon extends the invitation, and it tends to go to vendors with an established sales history and a recognizable brand who have kept inventory and customer service consistent.

The fee is charged as a percentage of your cost of goods sold. Amazon publishes no rate, so every figure in circulation comes from third parties: agencies and tool vendors working with enrolled accounts consistently report 2% to 6% of COGS, which on a million dollars of COGS works out to somewhere between $20,000 and $60,000 a year. Treat those as reported numbers, because the only rate that applies to your account is the one in the offer Amazon puts in front of you.

Where it lives in Vendor Central

What enrollment gets you is an assigned point of contact who works your account directly, called a Customer Success Manager (CSM) in some accounts and a Brand Specialist in others. The catalog work the program does runs through that person, and so does the money question: Amazon publishes no AVS rate, so what the program would cost your account is something you learn from the offer Amazon makes, not a figure you can check in advance.

So if a consultant or an agency has pitched you AVS, the useful next step is asking Amazon what your account has actually been offered, because the invitation and the rate both start on Amazon’s side.

Why it matters to a vendor

The fee is a percentage of COGS, so it grows with the business it is attached to. A rate that was easy to accept at signing can be a much larger line two years into a growing catalog, with nothing about the agreement having changed, which makes AVS worth re-examining every budget cycle instead of treating the original yes as settled. What you are weighing each time is whether the assigned contact recovers or unlocks enough over the year to clear a cost that climbs with your own volume.

Related terms

• Amazon Shipped COGS: the cost-of-goods figure Vendor Central reports, which is the base an AVS percentage is quoted against.
• Co-op: a separate percentage of your Amazon business committed under your vendor agreement and deducted from what Amazon pays you.
• Glossary index: the rest of the Vendor Central terms and InsightLeap metrics.