In March, Amazon launched Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD) as an international extension of its warehousing and distribution service. The first major hub opened in Shenzhen, China, and Amazon later expanded the network with facilities in other parts of China: Shanghai and Ningbo. The goal of this service was to make it easier for sellers to store inventory near the point of manufacture, instead of shipping it in advance to each country where they sell.

“GWD is the first step in our vision for Next Generation Global Selling: you list your products once, get them to the origin warehouse, and sell them globally from day one. This vision transforms cross-border commerce: you focus on building your global brand while Amazon handles the operational complexity to reach customers around the world,” Amazon explained at the time.

That first market Amazon started with was, of course, the United States.

Now, the company has announced the expansion of this service to seven new destinations before the end of the year, including Spain, in addition to the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada. With this expansion, a single centralized inventory will be able to cover all eight countries. In fact, the idea is that sellers only need to manage a single inventory, which will be shipped to each country as demand arises. Furthermore, Amazon explains that this service allows for FBA inventory replenishment up to five days faster.

To give an example: without GWD, a seller who manufactures in China and sells in several countries has to decide how much stock to send to each market in advance. If they send too much to Spain and too little to Germany, for example, they could end up with excess inventory in one country and stockouts in another. This is the situation that the GWD service aims to solve, allowing Amazon to distribute inventory among these markets based on demand.

In fact, sellers can choose between automated replenishment using artificial intelligence or, if they prefer, manual control. In any case, Amazon will handle the entire cross-border logistics process.