Harpy Glossary

NAFN (North American Fulfilment Network)

Amazon & D2C glossary · Harpy Media

NAFN (North American Fulfilment Network) lets an FBA seller serve the whole North American region from inventory stored in US fulfilment centres: your stock in the United States fulfils orders on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.com.mx, with Amazon handling the cross-border movement, customs clearance, and delivery.

What is NAFN?

It is the closest thing to a single-market experience in a three-country region. Instead of building parallel supply chains in Canada and Mexico — local warehouses, local import processes, local entities — you maintain one inventory pool in the US and let the network extend its reach. Prime eligibility follows the stock, which is the commercial point of the whole arrangement.

What NAFN actually gives you

Three markets from one pool. A Canadian or Mexican customer orders; Amazon picks from US inventory, moves it across the border, clears customs, and completes delivery on your behalf. You keep one set of stock instead of three, one replenishment rhythm instead of three, and centralised inventory management without regional warehouses.

Prime eligibility travels with it — the badge that does more for conversion in North America than almost any other single listing attribute. The trade-offs are real but predictable: delivery to Canadian and Mexican customers typically runs longer than domestic US speeds, and currency, tax, and local-language requirements all apply in the destination marketplaces.

What it takes to run it well

Enrolment runs through the relevant FBA export and remote-fulfilment programmes, and the prerequisites matter: local-language listings (English, Spanish, and French depending on market), currency settings, and pricing that accounts for cross-border fees rather than assuming a straight currency conversion will do.

The practical discipline is per-market pricing. Cross-border fulfilment costs more than domestic shipping, and a price that ignores that will sell steadily and earn nothing. The brands that succeed with NAFN treat Canada and Mexico as genuine markets — localised copy, sensible prices, tax handled — while enjoying the operational simplicity of a single stock pool behind them.

In practice

A US-based seller lists on Amazon.ca through the network. A Canadian customer orders the product; Amazon ships it directly from a US fulfilment centre, manages the border, and delivers it north of the line. The customer sees a Prime-badged offer with a longer-but-clear delivery estimate, the seller collects revenue in a familiar currency, and the same inventory that serves US shoppers now serves a second country at no extra stock cost.

⚠️ Watch out. Treating cross-border as a copy-paste exercise: enabling the programme, letting the price auto-convert, and leaving the listing copy in English only. Canadian shoppers see a thin, oddly-priced listing with no French content, conversion limps, and every order that does arrive earns less than expected because cross-border fees were never priced in. The inventory pool is shared; the market is not.

💡 Harpy tip. Price each market separately and sanity-check it against the cross-border fee. Then localise the small things that decide conversion: language where the market expects it, currency display that makes sense locally, units and measurements the buyer recognises. The operational simplicity of NAFN is the reward for doing the market work, not a replacement for it.

How Harpy Media helps

North American expansion is part of our growth planning: per-market pricing built on real cross-border fees, localisation of listings, and the enrolment logistics that make one inventory pool serve three storefronts.

NAFN FAQ

Which marketplaces does NAFN cover?

The North American region: Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada), and Amazon.com.mx (Mexico). Inventory is stored in US fulfilment centres and shipped cross-border as orders arrive, with Amazon managing customs and delivery.

Does NAFN require inventory in Canada or Mexico?

No — that is the point. You keep stock in US fulfilment centres and reach Canadian and Mexican customers from it. No local warehouses, no separate import processes, no parallel supply chain to manage.

Will delivery be as fast as domestic?

No — cross-border delivery to Canada and Mexico typically takes longer than US domestic speeds, and listings set expectations accordingly. What travels unchanged is Prime eligibility, which is what keeps conversion competitive in those markets.

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