How Can Brand Owners Gain Control of Their Amazon Listings

Whenever we speak to brand owners and authorised resellers and distributors that are moving into Amazon, two of the most common questions are:

• Can I gain control over the content of my Amazon Listings?
• Can I remove other sellers on my listings?

The good news is that this is mostly solvable and there are tools available to make make this possible. In this article we explore these solutions.

Can I gain control over the content of my Amazon Listings?

As a brand owner or authorized distributor, can I control the content of my listings on Amazon that were setup by resellers?

By default no seller owns a listing, Amazon owns all the listings. The seller that set up the listing initially has a certain level of control since they created it. But any reseller on a listing is able to suggest changes to the listing at any time. Such as updating images or changing content. These suggestions are not guaranteed to be accepted by Amazon. A brand owner (with brand registry) will get priority in suggested changes over a reseller. There is a lot of discussion and ambiguity about this, see this reddit post

The first step for a brand owner is to enroll in Amazon’s brand registry. In order to do this the brand owner must have a registered trademark from a local government agency As part of the enrolment process the trademark must also appear on the products or packaging. More details on this can be found here. Also check out A guide to brand registry

As a worst case scenario, a brand owner is able to open a new competing listing.

For official distributors: The brand owner, through brand registry is able to connect resellers to their brand registry. (see screenshot below). This connection gives you access to some brand benefits like A+ content. It’s not 100% clear as to whether this lets you have the same control over the listing as the brand owner, but we suspect that this is the case.

Can I remove other sellers from my listings?

Amazon has set up its marketplace to encourage competition.  By default, anyone can resell any product on Amazon unless the brand owner has restricted other sellers from selling it. Any listing can have multiple sellers competing for the buy box.  There are a number of options that a brand owner can take to control who can resell their products.

What can a brand owner do?

1. Enroll in Amazon’s brand registry to become the brand owner of the listing.  In order to do this the brand owner must have a registered trademark from a local government agency (more details).
2. Use Amazon’s report a violation tool – this can help you remove unauthorized sellers.
3. Apply for Amazon’s brand gating, this allows you to restrict other sellers listing products under your brand
4. Enroll in Amazon’s brand transparency program.  This is intended to stop counterfeited sellers, by providing a unique serialization code for each unit you manufacture
5. Project Zero: aimed at helping brand owners remove counterfeit products.
6. Open a new listing under the same brand: sometimes the best option is to start a new listing.  Since you create this new listing under your brand (you have already enrolled in brand registry), you will have complete control over the listing and can customize it how you want, at least initially.

For Official Distributors/Resellers

The brand owner, through brand registry is able to connect resellers to their brand registry. (see screenshot below).  This connection gives you access to some brand benefits like A+ content.  We suspect that to remove other resellers you will likely need to contact the brand owner.