# Prep Centres vs DIY When you're starting out, you'll be handling everything yourself — receiving stock at home, labelling it, boxing it up, and booking collections. That's the right way to start. But as your volume grows, doing everything yourself becomes a bottleneck, and that's when prep centres become worth considering. Here's an honest look at both options. *** **DIY — doing it yourself** You receive stock at your address, label every unit, pack your boxes, and book UPS collections yourself. Simple, cheap, and completely within your control. **The advantages:** * Cheapest option by far — no per unit fees beyond your own time * You learn the full process hands on — labelling, packing, shipment plans, all of it * You have full visibility over your stock at every stage * Mistakes are caught by you before they reach Amazon **The downsides:** * Time consuming — as order volumes grow, prep takes hours * You need space — boxes, stock, packaging materials, a printer. It takes over a room quickly. * It doesn't scale easily. At some point your time is worth more than the money you're saving. *** **Using a prep centre** A prep centre is a third party warehouse that receives your stock on your behalf, labels and packs it to Amazon's requirements, and ships it in for you. You source the products, place the orders, and direct them to the prep centre. They handle the physical side. **The advantages:** * Frees up your time completely for sourcing — the thing that actually makes you money * No storage space needed at home * Professional setup reduces the chance of labelling or packing errors * Scales with you — whether you're sending in 50 units or 500, the process is the same **The downsides:** * Costs money — typically around 50p per unit or similar, depending on the centre you use * Less visibility over your stock — you're trusting someone else with your inventory * Communication becomes important — errors happen and you need a prep centre that's responsive when they do *** **When to make the switch** There's no exact number but a reasonable rule of thumb is this — when the time you're spending on prep is time you could be using to source better leads and buy more stock, it's probably time to outsource it. For most sellers that point comes somewhere between consistently sending in a few hundred units a month and feeling like prep is eating their evenings. Start DIY. Learn the process properly. Then move to a prep centre when the volume justifies it and you're confident enough in the process to trust someone else with it. *** **One honest note** Prep centres vary enormously in quality, communication, and reliability. Before committing to one, ask for recommendations from other sellers, check turnaround times, and make sure their pricing is transparent with no hidden fees. A bad prep centre causes more problems than it solves. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://behind-the-buybox.gitbook.io/behind-the-buybox-docs/prep-centres-vs-diy.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.