The Easter bunny came early for some Amazon sellers this year. Read below to see how ungating Amazon restricted brands just got easier.
Starting August 2016, Amazon.com requires sellers who trade in popular brand items to apply for permission to sell these products. The restrictions only apply to some of the most popular brands, which are vulnerable to counterfeiting. In seller lingo, these have become known as Amazon restricted brands or ‘gated brands’.
We discussed the basic requirements in several of our posts. You may remember our piece on Ungating Brands or the one on Fees and Requirements for Gated Brands. They mostly touched on the steps sellers need to take if they want to qualify and apply to sell Amazon restricted brands.
Among other things, our posts mentioned that the application process involves a per-brand fee, a letter of endorsement from the manufacturer and three genuine invoices from either manufacturer or authorized reseller. Or at least that’s the way things used to be.
As our eagle-eyed Irina I. quickly pointed out, you now only need to submit one invoice along with your application, not three, as can be seen in the screenshot below. As far as we know, the change has not yet been made public.
Does the change apply to all Amazon restricted brands? We simply don’t know, but odds are it does. Have you come across the same requirement? We would appreciate it if you could share your experience with us and our readers using the comment section below.
Meet the SellerEngine Team at the next Amazon focused event!
We’ll be exhibiting at the Amazon Professional Sellers Meetup & Workshop, April 27 2017, in New York.