Key Takeaways
- Amazon has put systems in place to fight counterfeit products
- Counterfeit products can have serious effects on your business
- You can take steps to assist Amazon’s anti-counterfeit programs
Amazon’s 2020 Crack-Down
Amazon recently published the results of their efforts to crack down on counterfeit goods sold on its marketplace last year. The report covers a variety of initiatives and results of this initiative.
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- Invested over $700 million to protect its stores and customers from fraud and abuse, employing more than 10,000 people involved in those efforts
- Prevented over 6 million attempts to create selling accounts by bad actors
- Seized more than 2 million counterfeit products before they got to customers
- Blocked more than 10 billion suspected bad listings before they were published
- Their Transparency program helped protect more than 500 million product units
These are only some of the highlights of their fight against counterfeits. You can read a more in-depth summary here.
What do counterfeits do to you?
Many businesses are unaware of the negative impact that counterfeit product could or already have on their brand. Counterfeit products can be difficult to spot for a shopper because they may be sold through the same detail page as the legitimate product. The customer complaint probably won’t note who the counterfeit came from, so it reflects badly on the legitimate businesses. Beyond that, there are more negative effects of counterfeit products.
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- Drive down your star rating
- Cause bad reviews
- Reduce relevance in search results
- Tarnish brand image
- Drive away future sales
How can you help Amazon fight counterfeits?
This might seem like an overwhelming problem that only a large business like Amazon can handle. However, much of their work depends on the sellers and vendors that use the marketplace being vigilant and taking proper steps to find and report these bad actors. Individual sellers have several useful tools at their fingertips.
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- Amazon Brand Registry – Help build and protect your brand and helps report counterfeit activity and trademark infringement
- High Brand Registry use and successful reporting gives you access to Project Zero, which provides even more tools
- Identify possible counterfeiters –
- Look at the list of sellers on your products and compare to your known distributors. Sellers you don’t recognize are prime suspects.
- Sellers with a suspiciously low price. If you sell to distributors at $10 per unit, and a seller is offering it on Amazon for $9, that has a high probability of being counterfeit.
- Test for counterfeits – Buy suspected counterfeit products to identify them.
- Report – Notify Amazon of the counterfeit and seller through Brand Registry. *Note* Since all seller/vendor inventory is combined at Amazon warehouses, Amazon will usually shut off all sellers and make each one provide proof that their inventory is legitimate before allowing them to sell again.
- Navazon Inc. – As a full-service agency, Navazon utilizes software that monitors client products and each seller of the product, making it easy to identify sellers with low prices and possible counterfeiters to report.
If businesses are vigilant and thorough, they can assist Amazon’s efforts to eliminate counterfeit products. Working closely with our selling partners, Navazon’s specific expertise helps to catch and remove counterfeit sellers and reverse damage they may have caused. For more on how Navazon can help your brand grow, contact a representative today.