A seller running a candle brand wrote to us recently, mid-way through setting up an AWD shipment, after Amazon flagged those SKUs as meltable and refused them. The rest of the catalog was fine; just the candles bounced. The question was the obvious one: if AWD won't hold them, where does a seller actually put this inventory between manufacturing and FBA?<\/p>\n
This isn't a one-off candle problem. Amazon AWD's meltable exclusion catches a wider band of products than people expect — scented candles obviously, but also chocolate and confectionery, some cosmetics with low melt points (lip balms, certain body butters), and supplements sold in soft gel capsules that can deform or leak above a certain temperature. If your product changes shape, texture, or seal integrity when it gets warm, AWD is going to route around it, and you're left holding inventory with nowhere to land it while the rest of your catalog sails through.<\/p>\n
We take this category as standard policy, not as a special exception we make for one client and not another. Candles in glass containers, chocolate, gel-cap supplements — this is inventory we store every week, not a favor.<\/p>\n
A lot of 3PL listings say "climate-controlled" and mean "there's an air conditioner somewhere in the building." That's not the same thing as controlling temperature for a product that starts softening at 90-95°F. Our warehouse in Lebanon, Ohio runs around 63°F through the summer months — we're not chasing a marketing number, that's the actual reading on a warm July afternoon in a roughly 1,200 sq ft space with pallet racking and shelving. Ohio summers do get into the 90s outside, so this isn't a passive "the building has insulation" situation — it's active climate control that we maintain because dated goods and heat-sensitive products are a normal part of what comes through our door.<\/p>\n
When candles like these arrive, here's what actually happens at receiving: we check the manifest against what's on the pallet or in the carton, we open a sample unit to confirm the wax hasn't shifted or cracked in transit (glass containers can crack from rough handling even before heat becomes a factor), and we log everything into Ysell, the WMS we run the warehouse on. Clients get their own login there and can see unit counts, cubic footage, and storage cost in real time — not a monthly PDF from us, an actual live dashboard.<\/p>\n
For food-adjacent and supplement categories specifically, we check expiry dates on every unit at receiving, we rotate stock FIFO so older batches ship first, and Ysell flags if a batch is getting close to a date where it wouldn't clear Amazon's minimum shelf-life requirement anymore. That's not an add-on service — it's baked into how we receive dated goods, no extra charge.<\/p>\n
The pattern we see with candle and confectionery brands is a hybrid setup. Bulk of the catalog goes to AWD like normal. The meltable SKUs come to us instead, and we hold them at ambient-but-controlled temperature, then replenish FBA in smaller batches — often somewhere in the 100-200 unit range depending on sell-through — so the brand isn't sitting on six months of candle inventory melting in an Amazon fulfillment center in July, and isn't stocking out either. We do the FNSKU labeling and prep on those replenishment batches before they go out, same as we would for any FBA-bound shipment, generally turned around in 24-48 hours from receiving.<\/p>\n
Storage itself is billed by volume, not by box count — $1.00 per cubic foot per month on shelf, or $40.00 per pallet per month if it's palletized. First 7 days from your first inbound shipment is free, once per account, which is enough time to get things counted, measured, and shelved before the meter starts running. There's no minimum volume commitment on storage, but there is a $50 minimum monthly charge on the account once it's active — worth knowing up front so a slow month doesn't surprise you.<\/p>\n
Pallet receiving runs $25.00 per pallet regardless of whether that pallet is getting stored with us or forwarded straight through to FBA — it's a flat intake charge either way. If we're holding cartons and verifying contents against your manifest rather than just accepting a pallet count, that's $10.00 per box on top.<\/p>\n
We don't do refrigerated or frozen storage — everything here is ambient, just controlled ambient. So if your product needs to stay below 40°F, that's a different kind of facility than ours. We also don't take large furniture or loose lithium batteries. Hazmat items generally are case-by-case — talk to us before you ship, don't assume either way.<\/p>\n
Cosmetics with genuine hazmat classifications (aerosols, certain alcohol-based formulas) fall into that same "ask first" bucket rather than a blanket yes or no.<\/p>\n
Do candles need to be in glass to qualify for your storage? No — glass-contained candles are our standard case and the easiest to handle since the container itself limits mess if something does soften, but we also take tins and other formats. The main thing we're checking at receiving is container integrity, not material.<\/p>\n
How is this different from just paying for AWD's overflow storage? AWD isn't holding meltables at all right now — this isn't a pricing comparison, it's that the SKU gets rejected outright. A climate-controlled 3PL is the alternative, not a competitor on the same shelf.<\/p>\n
What temperature range are we actually talking about? We run around 63°F in summer months inside the facility. We don't publish a lab-grade spec sheet, but that's meaningfully below the point where most wax, chocolate, and soft-gel products start to soften or deform.<\/p>\n
Can you also prep and ship these products, or just store them? Both — we do FBA prep and FNSKU labeling on replenishment batches at our standard per-unit rates, and we can also fulfill FBM\/DTC orders for the same SKUs if you're selling direct as well as through Amazon.<\/p>\n
Do I need an existing prep account with you to send meltable inventory for storage? No — storage and receiving are available as their own service, you don't need a broader fulfillment relationship set up first.<\/p>\n