My Account Was Recently Brand Gated: What Should I Do?

Amazon has recently announced its new restrictions on third-party sellers who sell products from major brands on their platform, called “brand gating”. In order to sell from top brands such as Apple and Nike, sellers have to pay a very high fee to be approved to sell these high-quality goods.

No matter your experience with selling on Amazon, brand gating at Amazon is a necessary system to ensure that all brands are protected. And with this guide, we'll help you take the correct steps in passing the Brand Gating Policy and selling your products immediately.

What Does This Mean For Sellers?

Some privately owned brand sellers reported that they have to obtain approval even if they're going to sell their own products on Amazon, while other sellers have reported that account suspensions, buyer complaints, and policy warnings have increased sharply.

Q4 is the hardest time to be dealing with suspensions and blocked listings. For sellers, we have a few ways on how you can protect your company from Amazon's brand gating policy. Here are a few tips for our resellers out there:

• Don't Panic if Amazon brand gates you accidentally. Just give them the right documents and appeal the situation if necessary
• Make sure that your brand is trademarked
• Consider requesting brand gating at Amazon
• Give your authorized resellers letters or authorization
• Register with Amazon's Brand Registry if you didn't already

As for private sellers, follow these rules:

• Don't assume that because you haven't been brand gated that you're off the hook. Amazon sends their notifications and takes action in waves. Since they have a lot of sellers, they must scale to make those changes.
• Don't try to mix restricted brands with unrestricted brands to try to “cheat” brand gating.
• Check the wholesale agreements to see if you're eligible to sell on Amazon.
• Talk to your suppliers to see if they can get a letter of notification from the brand owner to start selling in Amazon.
• Do think about selling your inventory on platforms such as Walmart, eBay, or Jet or even your own website. Remember, diversification is a good idea.

Review Strategy

In another move to help with the customer experience, Amazon has updated its review guidelines. This means that incentivized reviews are banned, making Amazon a more transparent product reviewing platform.

Here is some advice on how to become suspension free when doing Amazon reviews:

• Don't try to secretly incentivize or refund customers to give reviews.
• Don't make fake buyer accounts to make reviews.
• Don't write reviews for your competitor's or your own products.
• Don't ask buyers to remove or modify reviews.
• Don't ask family/friends/employees to write our reviews for you or your competitor's products.

Conclusion

Remember, getting brand gated at Amazon isn't a bad thing. If you have the proper documentation and information about your brand, you can pass this issue with no problem. Stay active, contact Amazon, and continue to show your legitimacy so you can continue to sell on their platform.