How to register your brand in Amazon's Brand Registry

As of March 2019, Amazon has decided to take more control over the platform. The way companies sell on the marketplace and how brands list their products is changing and there are new decisions made by Amazon that affect different types of sellers.

The most discussed event during the past weeks was the “temporary pause,” which later resulted in permanent removal of many first-party vendors. Amazon Vendor Central decided to stop filing the weekly purchase orders to thousands of vendors, requiring them to sign up for Amazon’s Brand Registry enrollment during the next 60 days before the permanent removal.  If the company was not a brand owner, the vendor was referred to the Seller Central, where they could sell their products to end-consumers in Amazon’s third-party marketplace. Requiring a different set-up, most vendors were unprepared for this change.

Why were these decisions made?

The reasons behind the decision to cut orders to first party sellers could be allocated to a lack of profitability for Amazon to manage these non-brand owners, in some cases even selling forged products or branded products without authorization. Amazon furthermore ensured that Amazon’s Brand Registry protects registered trademarks and creates an accurate and trusted customer experience. Moreover, Amazon reported that thanks to this measurement, there are 99% less suspected infringements in the marketplace.

What are the benefits?

Amazon maintains that there are at least three remarkable benefits for sellers who follow the Brand Registry:

• Accurate brand presentation: Thanks to the Brand Registry, the product pages that contain brands are better controlled by brand owners, giving customers correct information associated with the brand. Apart from enhancing the brand content, brand owners have the ownership of the Buy Box for their branded products. Besides, Amazon offers brand-owners branded Amazon stores, called Amazon Storefronts. With this, customers who click on a brand name will be taken to a page designed by the brand owner where products are listed and presented in a customized way. Moreover, brand ads are also now available not only for Vendor Central sellers but also for third-party brand sellers.

• Powerful research and report tools: A simplified process has been designed to find infringements based on custom features for brands. With some novel tools such as image search, it is possible to find product listings that match your products or logo, making it easier to detect counterfeit goods or unauthorized brand sellers.
• Additional proactive brand protections: Using the information provided by brand owners, Amazon applies predictive protections to recognize and remove incorrect trademarked products or illegal appropriation of brand logos.

What are the requirements?

Based on Amazon Brand Service, several steps need to be carefully followed to enroll your brand on Amazon marketplace:

• Create and validate your seller account associated with Vendor or Seller Central
• Have an active registered trademark for your brand that appears on your product or packaging in each country in which you want to enroll
• Verify yourself as the rightful owner or the authorized agent for the trademark
• Enroll your brand providing information related to the brand name, trademark number, the list of product categories in which your brand should be listed, and a list of countries where your brand’s products are manufactured and distributed

If all these points are covered, your brand will get successfully registered on Amazon and you’ll be ensured of better protection of your company’s brand.

Amazon affirmed that the Brand Registry is done for improving the selection, value, and convenience for customers.  So far, we have seen that first-party sellers have experienced many issues during the past six weeks. With brand registry requirement, Amazon can require businesses to move from Vendor Central to Seller Central, causing tremendous disruptions for their business models. To avoid this sudden change for branded-product sellers and improve the uniformity of the shopping experience across the marketplace, Amazon is planning to launch the Amazon One Vendor system.

With this new setup, first and third party seller will manage their offers and products through the same platform. Moreover, Amazon One Vendor will determine whether a brand will be allowed to sell as a first or third-party seller or both. Casting a lot of uncertainty on whether your first-party orders will continue being filed as per usual.

As it is not clear when this system will be launched, as a first-party seller you should make sure to enroll for Brand Registry fast. Also, prepare yourself to sell through Seller Central. At ChannelEngine, we will help you to set it up to your third-party account in an efficient and automated way. This way you’ll be prepared to not only sell on Amazon’s third-party marketplace but also in all major marketplaces as well. This will instantly increase your revenue, margin potential and lower your dependency on Amazon.