To achieve e-commerce success, independent sellers who join the third-party Amazon Marketplace must pay attention to various factors, including reputation, customer service, inventory handling, marketing, and brand protection. To a certain extent, Amazon sellers can manage many of these factors. However, they cannot fully control what happens to product listings they generate under new Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs).
Brandlox: The Ultimate ASIN Protection Tool for Amazon Sellers
A seller’s presence on Amazon is largely determined by what shoppers see on the product listing pages, which in turn are classified under ASINs. For this reason, sellers who have introduced 10 or more new products to the Amazon Marketplace need the e-commerce protection that Brandlox provides. Brandlox is a subscription service that works as an online loss prevention tool.
The Need for ASIN Protection
A substantial factor in Amazon’s growth has been the development and implementation of ASINs, which are more than just product codes. They are also digital records that store important retail data about items sold on Amazon. An interesting feature of ASINs is that they can be accessed and edited by various parties. Shoppers can review the products and provide feedback while other sellers can sell the items listed on existing ASINs and even change product descriptions. This open-access feature makes sense for Amazon because the company retains ownership of the product listings and allows others to enter e-commerce data. However, this feature also creates issues for manufacturers and sellers of exclusive items who wish to build their brands.
For sellers who want to handle their branding and sales systems entirely on their own or through a few select distributors, the open nature of ASINs is not conducive to their business plans. Unauthorized sellers, drop-shippers and counterfeiters are known to take advantage of ASINs for their own unethical purposes and to the great detriment of independent merchants for whom Amazon is their primary online retail platform.
How Brandlox Protects ASINs
In recent years, Amazon introduced a program that locks out certain ASINs that mostly belong to major brands; in fact, the Brand Gating program was born out of a negotiation between Nike and Amazon in which the sporting goods brand demanded complete control over its ASINs. Small brands do not usually get approved for Brand Gating, and this is where Brandlox comes in.
Amazon sellers who wish to keep unauthorized sellers and counterfeiters away from their ASINS can trust in Brandlox to monitor their online retail activity. The moment an unauthorized Amazon merchant latches onto an ASIN, the owner of that product listing is immediately notified. Sellers who are authorized to sell products on behalf of a manufacturer, brand owner or exclusive distributors are “whitelisted” by Brandlox.
Handling Unauthorized Sellers With Brandlox Tools
Brand owners who keep close tabs on their inventories and distributors can handle rogue sellers in various manners. In some cases, unauthorized sellers may not have malicious motives; they could be new to the Amazo1n Marketplace and testing the system or they may have one or two items that they wish to sell under the first-sale legal doctrine. These sellers can be handled by sending them a direct message through Amazon Seller Central; most of the time, they will apologize and stop listing the products.
When the unauthorized sellers are relentless, they can b3e handled with a cease-and-desist noticed that can be generated and sent through Brandlox. Amazon Seller Support can be kept abreast of this situation with copies of the electronic correspondence in case the rogue sellers need to be suspended.
In case of counterfeiters, Brandlox subscribers can conduct a test purchase and generate an electronic trail that can be presented to Seller Central; this will often result in the unethical seller getting removed from the Amazon Marketplace.
On the Amazon Marketplace, brand protection starts with ASIN protection. Learn more about what Brandlox can do for your brand on Amazon by contacting one of our e-commerce consultants. Call us today at 1-866-848-6072.
