Reselling on Amazon: How to Choose Brands - Free Course | Module 2

Hi everyone! Welcome back to our Seller Assistant Academy.

In this module, together we will make the first step towards product sourcing. You will learn how to do brand research and understand why it’s important.

Let’s begin!

Chapter 1. Why do you need to research a brand

When you choose what to sell on Amazon, you will definitely look for popular products. Because these products have a proven success story and the risk of losing money on them is low.

Popular products are branded. You can sell some of them, while others are not suitable for reselling. 

Brand research helps ensure that you can resell the products of this brand. And it’s not restricted on Amazon. 

After you have found a brand that is resell-friendly for wholesale or online arbitrage, you can look for profitable deals among that brand’s products. You can find more information about brand restrictions on Amazon via  the link in the video description. But first, you must validate that the brand is resell-friendly. That means it must meet certain criteria.

Chapter 2. Criteria for brand research

• A brand must have a U.S. zip code. It’s only for American marketplace amazon.com. That is because U.S.-based brands are delivered fast, sell only authentic products, and issue necessary invoices. 

• A brand must have at least 200 listings. This is because typically more than half of brand’s products will not meet your requirements. For example, when a seller has more than 50% of the BuyBox, its products are not suitable for resale.

• The brand itself must not sell on Amazon. If it does, it will be difficult to compete with it. You have to check it in advance as Amazon will not allow you to list products of this brand.  

• A brand must not have an exclusive distributor on Amazon who is the sole legitimate product reseller. If they do, Amazon will not allow you to list brand’s products. 

• The brand must not be sold by Amazon. Competing with Amazon is impossible, and if Amazon sells more than 30% of the brand’s products, it’s better to find something else. 

• A brand shouldn’t have intellectual property alerts. If it does, it’s either selling trademarked products as private label and you can't resell that brand, or the brand files IP complaints against resellers and may not want other sellers to resell. You can check a brand for IP complaints and their nature with Seller Assistant’s IP Alert extension.

Chapter 3. How to do brand research?

Brand research looks differently for wholesalers and online arbitrage sellers and dropshippers. 

This is because the wholesaler researches a brand to make sure they can sell it on Amazon, approaches the brand and gets permission to sell different products of that brand in bulk, or buys from a distributor who has the brand's permission to sell.

Online arbitrage sellers and dropshippers buy single products of a brand and typically resell products without having a permission. This is not considered a violation if the brand doesn’t mind reselling, but sellers must additionally check that.

However, no matter the business model, wholesalers, online arbitrage sellers, and dropshippers can use Seller Assistant’s tools to automate brand research. Brand Analyzer and Bulk Restriction Checker help you simplify brand analysis and perform it quickly and effectively.

You will need these tools to do brand research. I will shortly describe how they work.

How to automate brand research with Brand Analyzer?

To analyze the brand, simply enter the brand name in the Brand Analyzer and get the results of brand research. The tool also generates a detailed report with all brand’s products and their essential metrics. You can download the report and filter the results by any metric you need. You can access the Brand Analyzer in your Seller Assistant personal account. From there, you can add the brand you want to research and download .xls files with the reports. 

Brand Analyzer shows:

• Date the brand was uploaded
• Brand name
• User that uploaded the brand
• Marketplace
• Number of brand’s products
• Monthly revenue from all brand’s products sold. Calculated as all the revenue generated by all brand’s products sold in a specific month multiplied by the average Buy Box price. Helps estimate how much you can earn if you sell the brand and if it’s worth reselling.
• Average Amazon Buy Box share rate in the brand’s products for the last 30 days, displayed in percentage. Helps estimate competition level from Amazon. 
• Average FBA seller count on the brand’s products. If the FBA seller count exceeds 15, profit margins can be lower because of the high level of competition, and the brand is not suitable for reselling.
• Average Buy Box price of brand’s products.
• Average FBA fulfillment fees per product.
• Average rating of brand’s products, from 1 to 5 stars.
• Total review count for all brand’s products.

How to check selling eligibility and restrictions with Bulk Restriction Checker?

You can check your selling eligibility with Seller Assistant Bulk Restriction Checker for multiple products at a time. The Bulk Restriction Checker tool enables you to check restrictions for up to 20000 ASINs at once. By uploading a list of ASINs, you can receive a detailed report indicating selling eligibility and restrictions.

When you download a report you will see 3 columns marked with lock icons. 

• A green open lock icon indicates you can sell this product, 
• a red closed lock means this product is restricted and you need approval to sell it, 
• and a red closed lock with an exclamation mark shows you can’t sell this product on your seller account.

Related: Amazon FBA for Beginners‍

‍What to Sell on Amazon 2024

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‍How to Sell on Amazon for Beginners - Complete Guide

Chapter 3-1. Steps for wholesale brand research

Step 1. Make sure a brand has more than 500 listings on Amazon

You should have a big range of products choose from, be aware that not all products will meet your profitability and other criteria. At best, you will choose 20-30% of the brand’s products. Therefore, the bigger number of products the brand has, the better. Enter the brand's name in the Brand Analyzer and see the product count in the Products column. 

Step 2.  Check that the brand is not private label

When researching a brand, you have to make sure it’s not a private label. A private label is a trademarked brand and its owner holds all rights to it on Amazon. Avoid such products. Typically, PL products have one seller in the listing and not many products.

Also, the brand name is the same or similar as the seller's name. To check a brand for PL, look in the Average number of FBA sellers. There must be more than one seller. The number of products must be more than 200.

Step 3. Verify brand’s popularity on Amazon

To check that, use Seller Assistant. Type the brand name into Brand Analyzer and download the report with the brand's products. View Best Sellers Rank on brand's products to see how well they sell. BSR shows how well the product sells in its category. The lower the figure the better product sells. If BSR is low on many products, it’s a popular brand. Low typically means anything less than 50,000, but a lot depends on the category.

Also, look in the Average rating column in your Brand Analyzer results to review the average rating of brand’s products. If it’s between 4 and 5 stars, the product is popular. 

Step 4. Check that the brand itself does not sell on Amazon

If it does, the brand will not allow you to sell on Amazon. To check that, use Seller Assistant. Open brand’s products on Amazon search pages. Seller Assistant will appear automatically. Open product listings where you have several sellers. You can see it in Quick View on search pages.

Open a product and go to Offers. If the product is sold by different sellers, the brand doesn’t sell on Amazon. Repeat that with several products of this brand to make sure those products are sold by many different sellers.

Step 5. Check that a brand does not have an exclusive distributor on Amazon

If a brand has the only legitimate distributor on Amazon, they will not allow you to sell their products. You can check it the same way as we’ve described in step 4. If the brand is sold by more than 3 FBA sellers, it doesn’t have an exclusive distributor.

Step 6. Verify the brand is not sold by Amazon. 

Amazon can be a seller on its own marketplace. Competing with Amazon is very hard, and if Amazon sells more than 30% of the brand’s products, it’s better to find something else. 

Amazon can sell under different names. Check the following examples.

Amazon Global - International Shopping — delivers orders sold on Amazon international marketplaces with an Amazon.com account. When a customer purchases an international product, it is shipped and sold from outside the United States by an overseas Amazon affiliate.

Amazon Export Sales LLC — Amazon itself sells products from its international marketplaces. For instance, Amazon can buy a product from a seller on Amazon.co.uk and sell it on Amazon.com.

Amazon Fresh is a network of physical grocery, convenience stores, and delivery services. Delivery is available for Amazon Prime members only.

Amazon Warehouse sells used, pre-owned, or open-box products. 

This Amazon brand is not a competitor for you, because you will sell products in new condition.

You can easily check if Amazon is a seller with Seller Assistant. 

In the Brand Analyzer table find the Average Amazon Buy Box share rate column. It shows Amazon Buy Box share rate in the brand’s products for the last 30 days, displayed in percentage. With it, you can estimate the competition level of Amazon. Typically, if Amazon’s share exceeds 30%, it is difficult to compete.

Step 7. Check if you can sell a brand on your Amazon account

Upload the list of brand’s products to Bulk Restriction Checker. You can parse it by using Brand Analyzer. To parse all the products of the brand just type its name in Brand Analyzer and download the report. 

Then, this Brand Analyzer’s report you need to upload to Bulk Restriction Checker and get a new report with restrictions. In this report you will have 3 columns with lock icons. 

• A green open lock icon indicates you can sell this product, 
• a red closed lock means this product is restricted and you need approval to sell it, 
• and a red closed lock with an exclamation mark shows you can’t sell this product on your seller account. 

If a brand meets all criteria and doesn’t have issues as described, you can approach a brand or distributor and start negotiation.

Related: Seller Assistant Extension Review

‍The Best Amazon Online Arbitrage Tool — Seller Assistant‍

‍How to Dropship on Amazon with Seller Assistant‍

‍Amazon Wholesale: How to Sell Wholesale on Amazon

Chapter 3-2. Steps for online arbitrage and dropshipping brand research

Step 1. Make sure that brand has more than 200 listings on Amazon

You should have a big range of products choose from, be aware that not all products will meet your profitability and other criteria. Enter the brand's name in the Brand Analyzer and see the total count of product in the “Number of Products” column. 

Step 2. Verify brand’s popularity on Amazon

To check that, use Seller Assistant. Type the brand name into Brand Analyzer and download the report with the brand's products. View Best Sellers Rank on brand's products to see how well they sell. BSR shows how well the product sells in its category. The lower the figure the better product sells. If BSR is low on many products, it’s a popular brand. Low typically means anything less than 50,000, but a lot depends on the category.

Also, look in the Average rating column in your Brand Analyzer results to review the average rating of brand’s products. If it’s between 4 and 5 stars, the product is popular. 

Step 3. Check that the brand itself does not sell on Amazon. 

If it does, the brand will not allow you to sell on Amazon. To check that, use Seller Assistant. Open brand’s products on Amazon search pages. Seller Assistant will appear automatically. Open product listings where you have several sellers. You can see it in Quick View on search pages.

Open a product and go to Offers. If the product is sold by different sellers, the brand doesn’t sell on Amazon. Repeat that with several products of this brand to make sure those products are sold by many different sellers.

Step 4. Check the brand is not private label

When researching a brand, you have to make sure it’s not a private label. 

A private label is a trademarked brand and its owner holds all rights to it on Amazon. Avoid such products. Typically, PL products have one seller in the listing and not many products. Also, the brand name is the same or similar as the seller's name. To check a brand for PL, look in the Average number of FBA sellers. There must be more than one seller. The number of products must be more than 200.

‍Step 5. Verify the brand is not sold by Amazon

If Amazon sells a brand or a product, it’s almost impossible to compete with it. As a huge retailer, Amazon always gets products at the lowest cost from suppliers. For this reason, it’s better to find a brand which is not sold by Amazon.  If Amazon sells more than 30% of the brand’s products, the competition may be too high and it’s better to find something else.

To check that, use Seller Assistant. In the Brand Analyzer table find the Average Amazon Buy Box share rate column. It shows Amazon Buy Box share rate in the brand’s products for the last 30 days, displayed in percentage. 

Step 6. Check that the brand is not restricted on Amazon

Amazon restricts certain brands and you must get their approval to sell them. You will not be able to list your offers on Amazon until you get the approval, and it’s better to check it before you buy the brand's products. Examples are Apple, Barbie, Dove.

Seller Assistant shows a red closed lock on search and product pages if a product or a brand is restricted. If all products of the brand are marked with the red lock, the brand is restricted.

Step 7. Verify a brand for IP complaints

Brands can file IP complaints against sellers. Some brands do not mind if you resell their products, but others do. These brands do not allow you to sell their products on Amazon without permission and file intellectual property complaints to Amazon about the sellers who violate that. 

You will not be allowed to list your offers of such brands on Amazon until you get an approval. It is better to check it before you buy the brand's products and avoid such brands at all. However, in some cases you will be able to sell a brand if you provide the proof of purchase - the invoice.

The best way to see if a brand or product has such issues is with the help of Seller Assistant. 

If Seller Assistant shows a red triangle icon on Amazon search or product pages, or on the supplier website in the Side Panel View, that means the product has IP complaints.

However, not all Amazon policy violations indicated by the red triangle are equally severe. You can see the type of the Amazon product policy violation on the product pages if you hover over a red triangle icon. Seller Assistant’s unique database of Amazon policy alerts shows the details of the exact type and date of the violation. 

For instance, if a product is marked with Suspected Intellectual Property Violation, that means you may be able to list your offer if you apply for approval to sell the product and provide Amazon with the proof of purchase (invoice). However, you must do that before you buy the product to make sure Amazon will allow you to sell it.  

Other violations are more severe and It’s better to avoid such products. But you must look at the violation type and decide if it can affect your sales.

Chapter 4. Let me show you an example of how to research a brand

First, we select a category. Let’s go to Home&Kitchen -  Kitchen&Dining. Now let’s look for «containers» and select the brand OXO. 

Seller Assistant immediately shows you that this brand is restricted and has IP complaints on all of its products. So we avoid this brand.

That’s it for now. 

In the next module, you will learn how to find products that are potentially good for reselling and how to do quick product research.