If you've ever ordered a name-brand product from Amazon and received something that looked slightly off — wrong packaging, different texture, maybe a faint chemical smell — you've probably encountered the commingling problem.

For years, Amazon's Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program allowed a practice called "stickerless commingling," where identical products from different sellers were pooled together in the same warehouse bin. When a customer ordered, say, a bottle of CeraVe moisturizer, Amazon would ship whichever unit was closest — regardless of which seller originally sent it in. The logic was efficiency: faster delivery, lower handling costs.

The unintended consequence was that counterfeit or substandard products from bad actors got mixed in with legitimate inventory, and the customer — and the brand — had no way to trace the source.

That era ends today.

What's Changing

Effective March 31, 2026, Amazon is officially ending stickerless commingled inventory for all sellers. The change creates two distinct tracks depending on your relationship with the platform:

Brand owners enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry with the Brand Representative role get a simplification. They can now ship inventory using manufacturer barcodes (UPC, ISBN, EAN) without needing to apply Amazon's proprietary FNSKU stickers. Their inventory is virtually tracked and never pooled with other sellers' stock. For brands, this eliminates the time and cost of applying extra labels while ensuring clean inventory attribution.

Resellers — anyone selling products they didn't manufacture — now face a hard requirement: every unit shipped to FBA must carry an FNSKU barcode. No exceptions. Inventory received without Amazon barcodes after today will be classified as defective. Amazon will attempt to correct labeling issues, but unlabeled units aren't eligible for reimbursement if they're lost or damaged.

The practical effect: if you're a reseller who previously relied on commingling to skip the labeling step, you now have additional prep costs and compliance requirements. Amazon estimates the per-unit labeling cost at $0.55 when using their FBA Label Service, though third-party prep services may charge less.

The Counterfeit Angle

This is the part that matters most for consumers and brands alike.

Commingling was, by design, a system that obscured provenance. When inventory from dozens of sellers was pooled into a single bin, it became nearly impossible to trace a defective or counterfeit unit back to the seller who introduced it. Brand owners have complained about this for years — Nike, Apple, and Birkenstock have all publicly clashed with Amazon over counterfeit products appearing under their listings.

By requiring individual seller tracking on every unit, Amazon is creating an audit trail that didn't exist before. If a counterfeit CeraVe bottle shows up in a customer's order, Amazon can now trace it to the specific seller, shipment, and even the prep center that handled it. That's a meaningful shift in accountability.

Why Now?

Amazon says the change is possible because most sellers now maintain enough inventory depth that commingling is no longer necessary to hit delivery speed targets. In other words, the operational justification for pooling inventory — getting products closer to customers faster — has been solved by scale alone.

But there's a regulatory dimension too. The EU's Digital Services Act and the U.S. INFORM Consumers Act have both increased pressure on marketplaces to verify seller identity and improve product traceability. Ending commingling aligns Amazon with the direction regulators are moving, even if the company frames the decision as a logistics optimization.

The Bigger Picture

The end of commingling is one of several moves Amazon has made recently to professionalize its marketplace and raise the barrier to entry for low-quality sellers. Combined with the rollout of Rufus, its agentic AI shopping assistant, and the shift of Prime Day to June, Amazon is quietly restructuring how commerce works on its platform — not just for consumers, but for the millions of businesses that depend on it.

For brands, this is largely good news. For resellers, it's a cost increase and a compliance burden that will squeeze already-thin margins. For shoppers, it should mean fewer surprises in the box.

Whether it actually solves the counterfeit problem is another question. Determined bad actors will adapt. But commingling made counterfeiting easy. As of today, it's at least harder.