You may have had a lemonade stand when you were a child, honing your business skills from an early age. Or perhaps you ventured into your own business at a later stage in life, having to make up lost time. Either way, as an Amazon seller, you understand that the rules of business are strict and rather unforgiving, especially when it comes to governmental matters.
One of these is importing the products you sell into the different countries serviced by the various Amazon marketplaces, especially when it concerns items with someone else’s brand name on them (e.g. a Sony TV versus a coat rack you made yourself).
Just like recording artists aren’t too happy about you taping their concerts and selling it for profit — as opposed to paying a royalty for their records and legally selling it that way — manufacturers of other goods won’t be terribly pleased if you get your hands over their goods and import it without their knowledge. This practice is called parallel importation, and it’s something we here at RepricerExpress feel deserves some exploring.
Breaking Down Parallel Importation: What You Need to Know
In a nutshell, a parallel import is an item that’s brought into another country where the seller of the product hasn’t sought permission from the trademark owner. For example, if you’re selling Nike trainers on your Amazon page and you haven’t gotten permission from Nike — the owner of the Nike trademark — and you ship a pair of shoes to someone in another country, you’re selling a parallel import.
It’s important to note that a parallel import does not include counterfeit goods, like bootleg copies of things like DVDs or electronic products. Parallel imports are only goods that are genuine and authentic, like the aforementioned Nike shoes (as opposed to you taking a pair of Walmart shoes, stripping their brand logo off it, and replacing it with a Nike swoosh).
How This Applies to Amazon Sellers
Reading this, you may be thinking of some counterexamples like books or magazines. It’s fairly widely known that published written works aren’t always the same in each country they’re sold in. Take the first Harry Potter book, which was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the British version and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the U.S. version; as well, you can look at magazines like Top Gear or Cosmopolitan for further cross-Atlantic differences. All three examples are possible examples of parallel imports if you take one version of the product and then sell it in a different country without the trademark owner’s permission.
Further, this would definitely be parallel importation if you took the product at the cheaper price, sold it for the higher price, and then imported it without permission. For a really clear-cut example of this, look at Canadian booksellers selling to fellow Canadians. Because the very same copy of the book is sold for much cheaper in the United States, with both their currencies of roughly the same value, a Canadian seller would be practicing parallel importation if they crossed the border, loaded up on American books for, say, $5 each, and then turned around and sold them at $10 to Canadian sellers.
It’s obvious where the benefit lies with parallel importation: the seller, especially when dealing with high-priced goods like electronics and jewellery, can make a tidy profit and compete more strongly against other Amazon sellers because they’re not abiding by the same rules. As well, trademark owners may have very strict rules in place about how, where and for how much their products have to be sold for when it comes to importing, which means you may be up against a strong legal wall if you attempt this.
Amazon has two different options in place when it comes to parallel imports: obey the trademark owner’s decision to either be able to import their product or not, or do your own thing if the trademark owner’s rights have been exhausted. Either way, it will require you to research each brand and manufacturer to see what the rules are about selling and importing a specific item, and it’s not something you can go about ad-hoc. If you’re unsure about where you stand, Amazon advises you to seek legal counsel just to be on the safe side. The last thing you want to do is get caught with your pants down and risk getting a severe cease-and-desist letter, as it’s just not worth it.
After all, you’ve worked plenty hard to get where you are today, and this is just the kind of thing that shouldn’t bring you down.
Parallel importation is just one of the many issues you’ve got to educate yourself on if you’re going to be a successful Amazon seller, as you’ve moved well past the innocent days of your childhood lemonade stand. To make life easier for you, one thing you don’t have to sweat at all is RepricerExpress—with our repricing software allowing you to competitively price all your (legally sold!) goods to any Amazon marketplace. And just to sweeten the pot even more, our repricing software is available free for the first 15 days you use it without limitation.
