So you’re starting on Amazon, congratulations! You did all the requirements, you submitted your EIN number, banking information, and you are now a seller on Amazon. But now what?
Before you list your products, there are other things you need to do. First, you need to register a trademark. You can list products without a trademark registered however then you will not have brand authenticity.
What is Brand Authenticity?
Brand authenticity is proven with a trademark, and it shows customers that they can trust the brands on Amazon and receive quality products. Without brand authenticity, you will not be able to create additional content called Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) or submit your brand store. You will also miss out on additional perks from Amazon like Vine, Subscribe and Save, and other programs.
At this point, if you don’t have a trademark, keep your free Amazon account and don’t pay anything till you get your trademark. And yes, we know it's very time-consuming to get a trademark in the US, sometimes it takes up to 6 months. But there is a loophole, you could get a trademark in Canada (takes about 60 days) and then apply that to the US side of Amazon as well Canada, meaning you are in the North American Fulfillment Network. So, you can use that trademark on the US side while you wait for your Trademark in the US to be approved.
To summarize:
Submit a trademark in Canada first, and then submit one in the USA. This way you can start selling on Amazon sooner through Canada because the trademark process takes less time there. Once the trademark in the USA is approved, then switch it over.
We do recommend having separate trademarks for each country.
Once you have the trademark, you now have access to Brand Authenticity, Brand Registry, Enhanced Brand Content, Below and Above the Fold, written content, and a Brand Store.
Before you list your products on Amazon, see if your products are already listed. We run into this issue all the time. With clients, we often see third-party sellers already selling their products on Amazon. This is an issue because they submitted your product, created an ASIN (Amazon Serial Identification Number), and that ASIN is registered to that certain UPC. In some cases that UPC is not your UPC, and it won’t match your GS certificate.
If your products are already listed on Amazon by a third-party seller, your best course of action is to see how much traction those third-party sellers already have. If you don’t know how to do that, please reach out to us at info@trisbell.com and we can assist.
Once you verify if your product is already listed, and there’s an ASIN already registered to your product, you might want to piggyback on them while you submit your GS1 certificate to Amazon to make sure you have that product registered. If you don't do that, it's going to be a nightmare when you are trying to change the content of whatever is already on Amazon because it won’t match your GS certificate. And if you have issues with your trademark, you may also have issues with your GS1 certificate pairing.
To summarize:
If you're already on Amazon just make sure you have a trademark. If you don't have a trademark, be aware you're going to have some issues trying to get all your content loaded.
If you have a trademark in the US or Canada, check if your products are already listed by a third party seller and if they are, you need to evaluate whether its easier to piggyback on the success of the product and then convert some of the existing content to your content as well.
