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Simplified Steps To Reduce Toxic Counterfeit Sales
Transcript:
Steps to reducing counterfeit sales specifically on Amazon.
My name’s CJ Rosenbaum, and we are, by and large, the number one law firm, when it comes to dealing with issues pertaining to Amazon and counterfeit sales. We use all the information that we’ve obtained by cross-examining Amazon’s executives, representing thousands of sellers, and being involved in tens of thousands of products every single year to help private label sellers and help brands protect themselves from unauthorized sales.
Today we’re going to be talking about counterfeit sales.
Simplified Steps To Actually Reduce Toxic Counterfeit Sales:
Tip one: either the brand or one authorized seller should get brand registry on Amazon.
What brand registry gives you is control over the listing or the description of your product on Amazon.
It will give you incredible tools to help you protect your brand, both from counterfeits and also from unauthorized sellers.
It gives you incredibly efficient ways to contact people and companies selling counterfeit products.
And last but not least, it gives you a much stronger position in terms of making counterfeit complaints about the sellers who don’t amicably stop selling counterfeits once they receive your cease and desist communication.
Tip two, monitor your business.
We use an incredible software solution that monitors every single product that we are watching. It’s not just the brand, but the individual product or listings.
Also, by using great software, you can not only monitor the listings where your product is being sold by itself, but many Amazon sellers will do what’s called bundling and take your product and put it with another product and then create another listing.
Accordingly, you need to use software that will give you daily reports as to who is selling your product to help identify who is selling counterfeit products on Amazon.
Tip three: send well-written cease and desist communications.
Amazon sellers all live in fear of their account being suspended. When an Amazon seller’s account is suspended, consequently, their money is frozen, their inventory is frozen, and Amazon is still charging them storage fees. They won’t even release the money that was earned from the sale of other products.
If you write a cease and desist communication effectively, you will let that Amazon seller know that if s/he doesn’t stop selling counterfeit versions of your products, their entire business is at stake. Afterward, most often they will stop selling.
We experience a 60 to 80% amicable resolution rate when it comes to sellers who receive the C and D communications that we send, because we know what to write. We know how sellers think, we know how they react.
Tip four: a test buy system.
Amazon comes in waves in terms of requiring test buys before you can assert a complaint.
In order to do test buys in an efficient manner, you need to have the infrastructure in place. You need to be able to organize the ordering of the product, the receipt of the product, receiving the emails confirming delivery, and then using specific tracking numbers to then assert your complaint on Amazon.
If you don’t have a system in place in advance, the test buys can be absolutely overwhelming. You can literally have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of test products arriving at your doorstep, therefore you must have the infrastructure system in place.
Before we get to the surprise, before we get to what you probably didn’t expect when it comes to protecting yourself from counterfeit sales, you must only assert valid counterfeit complaints.
If you’re a brand manager, if you’re engaged in brand protection and the products are not counterfeit, don’t assert a counterfeit complaint.
What you’re doing is you are shooting your own brand right in the foot. When you assert a false counterfeit complaint, you are now giving that unauthorized seller leverage over you and leverage over your brand. You have opened up the brand to civil liability. You have opened the brand up to complaints against it on Amazon.
Tip five: do not assert baseless counterfeit complaints.
Only alleged counterfeit when you know the products are counterfeit.
Okay, last but not least, you may not know this. One of the most significant risks that brands have from counterfeit goods being sold on Amazon is Amazon itself. And it doesn’t matter whether you have a tier one brand manager at Amazon. It doesn’t matter if you’re paying a quarter million dollars a year to Amazon to help you protect your brand. We have inside information that Amazon will go around your tier one brand manager within the company within Amazon’s own staff and reach out to what Amazon calls Amazon vendors.
They will ask those vendors to get Amazon inventory of your branded product. Amazon will knowingly buy, and then resell counterfeit products.
We had one case where Amazon literally had over 160 consumer complaints that the products that Amazon was buying from its vendors and then reselling on Amazon were counterfeit and they kept selling the products.
Not only did Amazon keep selling counterfeit products, but they went back to that Amazon vendor and asked that Amazon vendor to open up multiple accounts so that Amazon could continue to buy products from it to sell not just in the US, but also in the UK, and also then in Australia.
Amazon needs to be watched like any other seller if you want to protect your brand from counterfeit sales on Amazon.
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In advance of our meeting, we will look at your branded listings and have a game plan ready on how you can help your company protect itself from counterfeit sales specifically on Amazon.
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