I’m going to add Transparency to some original ASINs of mine that some Canadian sellers have hopped onto the listings.
After Transparency is set up, can the FBM Amazon.CA seller simply use a 3rd party shipping platform to bypass having to enter the Transparency code in order to ship the product? Or can they still use Amazon Buy Shipping and just skip entering the code?
Since I only sell my own original products, I’ve never had to enter the Transparency code - wondering how it works for those selling the same product with or without authorization.
Once an ASIN is in the transparency program, current sellers are told that they have to comply by x date. Units at FBA are allowed they are sold out. FBM units must have the transparency code within x days (like 14-30 iirc). Without the code they cannot list their units.
I don’t use transparency. Years ago Amazon assigned me a transparency person to push it, and from what they explained, you needed to print a label (and pay Amazn for each label) for every unit you sold, whether through amzn or through other channels. I hated the concept because of 1) cost, 2) amount of work, and specially 3) wtf Amazn, why would I give you the exact data of how much I sell? It’s the same reason I have refused to even look at their new(ish) shipping program (veeqo). I would not want to share with anybody how much I ship where. With transparency it was the same thing, I don’t want to tell Amazon how much I sell, nor have to do extra work and pay them to provide them said information
Exactly. This is also why I don’t use Amazon Global Logistics. None of their business where I get my products made, how much I import or any other information outside of my sales on Amazon.
Giving them all that information is just asking them to compete with you.
This is crazy.
I never looked into it because I assumed it was for registered brands. What is their claim to want the other channels included? Sounds like protection money - pay for the labels to protect your valid inventory and your right to sell it.
The Amazon info page seems to indicate that brand registry participation is required:
If you meet all eligibility requirements, enroll your brand in the Transparency program. Use the same credentials you use to log in to the Brand Registry portal.
Our bad … we never signed up to get into transparency but have access to it so was thinking it was not required … when in fact we have access because our brand trademark is in brand registry which gives us access.
If I remember correctly (big if, this was a while ago) the justification is that every unit needs to have the code so that units sold outside of Amazon can’t be re-sold as originals without seller permission.
They don’t ask for the specific channel (that would be veeqo…), just for the total volume
It sounds like the code is required to create an offer on the ASIN so another FBM seller would not be able to get any orders to ship.
If you authorize other sellers, you would have to supply them with the codes to label their stock I believe. Unauthorized sellers would be blocked from creating offers since they wouldn’t have the codes.
I understand the permission/code part. I don’t see how anyone can buy at retail somewhere else and afford to resell on Amazon, unless sourced at clearance price.
Me neither, just trying to think it through; doesn’t add up to a good reason to require all product be labeled regardless of sales venue except for the revenue from the label charges. Un-labeled product is supposed to be blocked from FBA and MF period, and Amazon’s only concern should be Amazon. To label or not for other venues should be at the seller’s discretion, their potential problem if they don’t.
There’s a reason why some of us think of Amazon as a ‘SGM’ (“Sociopathic Greed Machine”) entity, and I’d submit that the diabolically-insidious plan to monetize itsown lack of accountability (much less any true, real-time transparency) in its fulfillment operations - as is exemplified by such machinations as the launching of the Transparency Program - is a prime exemplar, among the many other examples in similar vein, of EXACTLY why we do.
That’s a really good question, and this is my interpretation of an answer.
A seller like me, small family owned business, that is breaking his rear-end to make a sale either on amazon or outside, can’t really benefit from transparency because I don’t have a distribution structure that could compete against me. Anybody that buys from me is buying too expensive to make a profit through Amazon, even if they buy cheap enough to sell through other (more traditional) venues, for instance door to door.
A seller/manufacturer like me has too high fix, variable, and marginal costs to compete against the corporate/stablished behemoth that rule the market, so my niche exists because I don’t have the overhead of feeding a huge distribution chain that will riot with pitch and forks at my door if I sell at a given price on Amazon (in other words, prevent them from existing)
A seller like, say Nike, has a distribution system where they can’t list on Amazon at a low price, because they will strangle their distributors, and there would non-figurative blood on the street. Portland would burn again…
Transparency would (in a very twisted way) protect their distributors and their distribution channels, and would prevent the ID10T who saw a youtube and believe “first sale doctrine” allows them to sell the item they bought in clearance on Amazon as “new”
The most fun/twisted part of the whole system is that Amazon gives small sellers (again, I’m using myself as example) a great showcase where to grow, but it effectively caps said growth. The more I grow with Amazon, the less I can grow outside, because of what I said above. I’m growing my dependency on Amazon, cutting the distributors by capping prices at the value at which all the other sellers that sell products like mine sell. Regardless of quality or strategy, volume on Amazon is only achieved through price, not so much by quality. At least not in my categories.
Unless I’m able to grow above that fix/marginal cost, I will never be able to scale up to the point where I could conceivably need transparency due to having such a large margin on Amazon vs the price that I’d (hypothetically) sell to my authorized distributors, who would in turn sell to the ID10T who saw a tiktok and believes that a receipt is an invoice.