If you manufacture or sell your own brand and want to be an ace seller on Amazon, utilising Amazon Brand Registry is a must. It helps protect your registered trademarks (on Amazon) and create an accurate and trusted experience for customers.
Why Enrol in the Amazon Brand Registry?
Grasping the fundamentals of Amazon Branded Registry is really simple.
The main aim is to make it easier for you to organise your brand on Amazon and they help you in a number of different ways, so let’s take a look at some of the biggest ones.
1. Protect Your Brand From Nefarious Buyers
One fear that sellers have when selling their own brand is that another merchant is going to hijack their product. It’s such a hugely competitive marketplace, plenty of sellers are willing to go to great lengths to get ahead.
However, what Amazon Brand Registry does for you is lets you register your brand so you can have sole ownership of the Buy Box for it. And if they do try and hijack your product, you can simply contact Amazon and have them removed.
2. Enjoy More Control Over Listing Content
As a ‘regular’ seller on Amazon, you’re bound pretty tightly to their algorithmic requirements. But if you decide to go the Amazon Brand Registry route, the requirements are somewhat loosened and you can play around more with:
- product titles
- product details
- product images
- Amazon-issued product IDs and avoiding ones like UPCs and EANs
- reducing matching errors that can occur during the listing process
3. Wider Access in Selling Your Brand
So we’d mentioned the types of sellers who are eligible for Amazon Brand Registry, but we’re going to widen the definitional scope a little bit. There are essentially five different kinds of sellers who qualify:
- Those who make their own products
- Those who are private label brand owners
- Those who produce branded white label products
- Those who are distributors with express permission to own a brand’s content on Amazon
- Those who are traditional manufacturers
As you can see, this allows you some pretty good leeway in being able to qualify for Amazon Brand Registry.
And even if you don’t think you might be eligible, try being creative and looking for a loophole. However, if you sell in one of the following two categories, then the previous five points won’t qualify you, unfortunately.
- Books, Media, Video, DVD, BMVD
- Entertainment Collectibles/Sports Collectibles (both products and used products)
Brand Registry and Counterfeit Goods
Amazon announced in March 2017 that they will be expanding their Brand Registry program to remove counterfeit goods from the marketplace.
From as early as April, any brand can register its logo and intellectual property with Amazon so they can take down listings and potentially seller accounts when counterfeits are flagged.
Why Did Amazon Introduce Brand Registry?
Amazon faced multiple lawsuits from brands who claimed the marketplace wasn’t doing enough to stop counterfeit products being sold on their site.
Amazon Brand Registry was introduced to reduce counterfeiting and intellectual property (IP) violations on the site.
It shifts some of the responsibility from Amazon to brand owners and makes it easier for Amazon to enforce its Standards for Brands Selling in the Amazon Store.
“Amazon obsesses over providing our customers the best possible shopping experience. Since the inception of our store, one way we have ensured a great customer experience is by sourcing products directly from Brands and selling them to customers in our store ourselves. In order to preserve that customer experience, we may choose to source products from some Brands for sale by Amazon only. Other Brands can operate as sellers in the Amazon store if they can consistently maintain our standards for customer experience. However, to prevent customer confusion, if any of the Brand’s products are sold by Amazon, the Brand may not also sell those products as a seller in the Amazon store.”
Amazon Brand Registry 2.0
Brand Registry 2.0 offers brand owners:
- Listing content control.
- A dedicated internal team.
- A tool to monitor your brand on Amazon.
- Access to other marketing and authenticity programs.
- The ability to add “agents” who can also access the Brand Registry tools.
Amazon’s Brand Registry team enables brands to:
- Submit IP infringement claims.
- Report marketplace violations including “not as described” and product review manipulations.
- Report listing issues including incorrect information on detail pages, incorrect variations, and appealing blocked listings.
- Retract IP infringement claims.
- Report technical issues.
- Escalate previously submitted cases.
The Process in Registering and Listing Products
You can expect the whole process to get approved to take about two weeks, provided you give Amazon everything it needs for your brand. For each product, take a picture that clearly displays the product packaging and branding, as well as the same on the product itself. You’ll also have to include a link to your own store where you’ve been selling the products up until this point.
While this is going on, you’ll have plenty of time to think about which Key Attribute you’ll be using. You can pick one of the following:
- Catalogue number
- Manufacturer part number
- Model number
- Style number
Whichever one you choose is entirely up to you, but remember, you should be making your decision based on whichever key attribute will never change and will always be easily identifiable to distributors and customers.
If/when you’ve been approved for Amazon Brand Registry, the fun begins: listing! There are two big rules to follow for this, brand name and key attribute value.
Brand Name
Make sure to spell and capitalise your brand name exactly how it appears, especially how you wrote it out when you submitted it to Amazon for approval. Consistency is the key here, so take the thirty seconds necessary to make sure everything lines up the same.
Key Attribute Value
We listed the various key attributes you can choose from — once you select yours, you’ll have to give it a unique value. Whatever key attribute you select, use it for all of your products — but make sure each one has a different value.
We’d also mentioned that you can use Amazon-issued product IDs and avoid UPCs and EANs, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to not use them. The decision is totally up to you. Just remember that if you choose one of those, or use a JAN, then it must have a key attribute value.
And if you choose not to use one of those three and find some alternative key attribute, Amazon will simply use your choice — but you still have to select a value for this key attribute.
Updates to the Amazon Brand Registry – May 2017
By enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry, you’ll gain access to “powerful tools including proprietary text and image search, predictive automation based on your reports of suspected intellectual property rights violations, and increased authority over product listings with your brand name.”
You can work together with Amazon to reduce potential intellectual property rights violations and promote an accurate representation of your brand (on Amazon).
Brands must have a government-registered trademark to be eligible to join. The trademark must be a “standard character mark” and the trademark must match the brand name printed on products and/or packaging.
Currently, Amazon only accepts active word marks that have been issued by government patent and trademark offices in the United States, UK, Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the European Union.
To enrol a brand in Brand Registry, you must provide the following information:
- Brand name that has a live/active registered trademark.
- Government Registered Principal Trademark Registration or Serial Number
- For USPTO marks, the Mark Drawing Type must be equal to “4 – STANDARD CHARACTER MARK” or “1 – TYPESET WORD(S)/LETTER(S)/NUMBER(S)”
- Images of the brand’s logo.
- Images of products and packaging that carry the trademarked brand name. If the product is not branded, the packaging must be branded.
- A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, sporting goods, electronics) in which the brand should be listed.
- A list of countries where the brand’s products are manufactured and distributed.
Source: Amazon Brand Services
Brand Registry Dos and Does Nots
Amazon’s Brand Registry:
- Gives the brand owner greater control over their listing content.
- Offers a separate, more efficient, internal team for fixing and escalating incorrect listing contributions, and incorrect variations.
- Offers a dedicated internal team for submitting and escalating IP infringement claims.
- Provides a tool to monitor your brand on Amazon.
- Grants brand owners access to Enhanced Brand Content on their listings.
- Allows brand owners to add “agents” to their brand registry to access the above tools.
Amazon’s Brand Registry does not:
- Gate your brand or limit other sellers from selling it.
- Allow you to whitelist/blacklist other sellers from selling your brand.
- Allow someone other than the brand owner to submit infringement claims against other sellers.
Source: Web Retailer
I am an Amazon seller who enrolled a brand in Amazon Brand Registry prior to April 30, 2017. Do I need to re-enrol?
If you enrolled in the Brand Registry prior to 30 April 2017 and the brand meets the above-listed eligibility requirements, Amazon encourages you to re-enrol the brand in the new Amazon Brand Registry.
If your brand does not meet the current eligibility requirements there is no required action for you at this time. You’ll continue to be able to list without a Global Trade Identification Number (e.g., UPC, ISBN, EAN, JAN) by using a key attribute such as part number or model number.
For access to these new features, check out Amazon Brand Registry and use your existing username and password to get started.
Reprice in Real-Time on Amazon
So all in all, it’s pretty simple to get involved with Amazon Brand Registry. And once you do, you’ll have to start thinking about how to price competitively using RepricerExpress so you can sell as many of your products as possible. This part’s the simplest of all: just sign up for your 15-day free trial to get started.
