You might have noticed that there are other people selling your own product in your own listing, even if you are Brand Registered with Amazon and own your trademark.

If they’re priced cheaper than you or they are using Amazon fulfillment while you’re using merchant fulfillment then they might even be the Featured Offer (get the buybox)

The first question you’ll have is:

Why are there resellers in my listing?

Amazon policies allow anyone to sell a product inside their marketplace. This means that if someone has a unit of your product, they can sell it in your listing.

How do resellers get my product?

Several ways. 

First of all, if your brand sells on multiple channels they might have bought your products there (for example your own website or Walmart), another way they might have gotten it is by buying it directly from your own listing.

These are the legitimate ways they might have gotten your product, but there are also illegitimate ways for them to have it, namely:

-Buying stolen merchandise: If you’ve had packages stolen or shrinkage at your 3PL it’s possible that those products will make their way to resellers. These stolen items are usually acquired through Telegram groups or Facebook Marketplace.

-Buying your merchandise from your supplier: Some unscrupulous suppliers will resell your stuff “from the back of the factory” to resellers.

-Counterfeits: This is a rare and extreme case, but it does happen. Sometimes those resellers will sell outright counterfeits, they could be white labeled products which look similar to your product, but they’re just  missing your branding, and other times they could be completely different products.

How do I remove resellers from my Amazon Listing?

Despite Amazon allowing resellers there are ways to kick people out from your listings

The first step is to determine if they are actually selling  your product. For this you will have to perform a “test buy”, that is you will have to purchase their product with your own personal account, receive it in person and verify if it’s a legitimate product or if it’s a counterfeit.

If it’s a counterfeit then you will report it to Amazon using the Brand Registry dashboard. You will have to provide an order ID for the test buy and photo evidence of the product being, with this you’re almost guaranteed to get them kicked out (and probably banned) for good.

But, what if they are selling a genuine item acquired through legitimate means?

In theory you CAN’T report them or remove them since they’re not breaking any Amazon terms of service, but some of the tactics you can try re the following:

1 Buy them out. If you go to the quantity section on the listing (right above the “Add to Cart button”) and you click the arrow you can see how much stock they have left (if they haven’t limited the number of units that someone can buy). If it’s a small and cheap enough number of items you can go ahead and buy all their inventory, however this tactic is ineffective if they have too many units, if the product is expensive or if they limit the number of units that a single shopper can buy.

2 Ask them to stop. Click on the seller’s profile and message them directly, inform them that you are the owner of the brand, that you don’t have any reseller agreements and as such you can’t guarantee the precedence of their merchandise and that you will report them as counterfeits. Offer to let them liquidate their stock and solve this amicably without any reporting. You can take this a step further and send a physical cease and desist letter to their address (send me a message and I’ll show you how to get their address). Most resellers will agree to stop.

3 If these don’t work, there is a third way of kicking them out, but it’s a grey area and I only recommend that in more extreme cases. Contact me or book a consultation with me if you would like to learn more.

What I’ve just described are reactive measures, but the best way to stop other people from selling on your Amazon listings is to be proactive. Let’s see now how to prevent resellers on Amazon Listings.

How do I prevent resellers on my listings?

Resellers are on your listings to make money, the best way to stop them is to make it unprofitable to resell your product. Here’s how you do it:

1 Enforce MSRP across your channels: The easiest way to prevent resellers is to make sure that all of your sales channels are priced the same. Do you have distributors? Are you a vendor for another retailer? Check that all channels are priced the same.

2 Watch your discounts on Amazon: Maybe you only sell on Amazon or your MSRP is the same across channels, but if you are running heavy discounts on the platform, not limiting the number of discounts, or worse, letting discounts stack then resellers might be buying your inventory directly from your listing and turning around to resell it. The solution is to audit your discounts to make sure that this isn’t happening.

3 Watch your discounts on your ecommerce: If you have aggressive discounts and promotions on your website then resellers might be getting your product there. 

Audit your orders for any unusually low prices (discount gaming) or unusually frequent purchases from the same addresses, names or emails. 

If you discover that a given discount is being abused then go ahead and cancel it.

Another tactic is to set a warning for any orders under a given price, if any orders come in under that then you should manually review them and make sure that they are not gaming your discounts.

Yet another tactic is to preemptively block any orders being sent to a 3PL or prep center. Get in contact with me or book a consultation and I’ll send you a list of addresses you should block. 

4 Find the leak: Like a spy novel, we need to find the mole. There will be several candidates and this is how you catch them:

      4.1 Your factory: What do the reseller products look like? Are they selling the same product but missing something you include at the 3PL level? If so, then it’s likely that they’re getting your product from your factory. If so, address this directly with them and tell them to cut that out or they’ll lose your business.

     4.2 Your 3PL: Are the resellers’ products completely identical to yours? if so then they might be getting it from merchandise stolen at your 3PL, either rogue employees or outside criminals. Look into your shrinkage/lost items and address this with your 3PL.

     4.3 Your Freight Forwarder: Have your containers been stolen? What about loss in-transit? If so then this could be the source of the leak. There’s not much you can do after someone steals it from the truck, but you can track lot numbers and so if any product is stolen in the future then you’ll know where in your supply chain it was stolen from and can pursue legal action.

    4.4 Ask the resellers!: If you followed step 2 of the Removing resellers section of this guide you can literally just ask them. I’ve found Telegram groups, Discord servers, and more where people sell merchandise of dubious provenance. In extreme cases, you can escalate this into a police matter and you might even recover some of the stolen inventory.

Conclusion:

Losing the Featured Offer (buybox) on Amazon will cost you A LOT of money and it’s really hard (but not impossible) to kick out resellers.

It’s much easier to prevent those resellers in the first place. 

If you need help either kicking off resellers or preventing them in the first place, you can book a free 30 min consultation with me or send me a message.