Since 1984, the Geroy family has specialized in selling home improvement products at their brick and mortar store. According to Kyle Geroy, owner of Geroy’s, they did $80,000 in sales in their first year of business, a seemingly small number compared to the $80,000 they can now do in a day. Located in a northern Minnesota town with a population of approximately 2,500 people, Kyle Geroy, found that Selling on Amazon has allowed them to expand their customer base from local customers to Internet shoppers nationwide.

With more than 50,000 stock-keeping units, the ability to list new products online in a matter of minutes is priceless for Geroy’s. Kelly Monsrud, the company’s CIO, can list upwards of 5,000 items a day through Seller Central. This allows Geroy’s to offer new items at a steady pace while staying up- to-date in their product listings.

At any given time, Geroy’s has approximately $200,000 in merchandise stored in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, but during the holiday season, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is even more essential to its business. Geroy’s sees a spike in sales every holiday season, but in 2009, its December sales alone exceeded its sales from the first 11 months of the year, and it found itself shipping full truck loads to Amazon fulfillment centers. Geroy’s was thankful to have Amazon’s help with the shipping and handling of its products, as well as customer service. “Without FBA, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the number of orders we receive online. We can only ship out 300 packages a day on our own,” says Geroy. “Not having to handle the customer service during our busy season is very helpful - we’re there when needed, but we trust Amazon to handle the bulk of the work.”

Geroy attributes much of his sales growth to Fulfillment by Amazon. The combination of the extra help fulfilling orders and the Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime he’s able to offer as part of FBA resulted in a 600% increase in sales from 2008 to 2009. As an Amazon Prime member himself, Geroy believes that customers are more likely to purchase from sellers that offer free shipping. “Being able to offer our customers Amazon Prime through our use of FBA seems to help a lot,” says Geroy.