Navigating Brand Registry as an Amazon Vendor

Podcast transcript

Paul Sonneveld
Hi everyone, my name is Paul Sonneveld, your host of Marketplace Masters, and welcome to another live episode. So today, we're diving into a topic that consistently creates confusion and frustration in the Amazon vendor space. Brand control and brand registry. Over the years, we've seen a major shift in how vendor relationships work, who can actually control listings, how contribution hierarchies impact brand authority, and all of that. 

Complex topic, but to help me unpack it, I am joined by Scott Bass, the Director of Operations at eCommerce Intelligence. Scott works closely with brands to grow awareness, ranking and performance across Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. And he and his team spent a lot of time navigating the real-world complexities of vendor accounts. Scott, it is absolutely fantastic to have you on today's show. It's great to have you, and thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge today. 

Scott Bass
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Paul. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, no, looking forward to getting started and going through it. Yeah. Thank you. 

Paul Sonneveld
Absolutely. Just before we jump into it, I do want to remind our audience that this is a live show. So first of all, things probably go wrong. I will probably mute myself and talk a couple of times during the show. That's my regular habit. But more importantly, this is a complex topic. I know we've had a really strong response in terms of people expressing interest in this topic. If you are joining us live, don't hesitate to pop your questions and put them to us. You can do that through the LinkedIn comment section or the YouTube comment section. 

I will sort of literally catch those questions, and I will put them in front of Scott during the course of the show. So don't hold back. We want this to be interactive, and we also want to learn from each other. So please put your comments and questions in the comments section. All right, let's kick us off. Scott, I'm going to start with the first question here. And really just to set the scene, right, how has the relationship sort of between Amazon vendor and brand registry really evolved, you know, specifically sort of, you know, from like, I think, sort of when it started to really the present day, you know, how would you characterise that evolution? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, so over the years, it has changed quite a lot. And yeah, in terms of brand registry on Amazon, not just with vendor, but with also with seller. So not just 1P, but 3P. But yeah, it's changed quite a bit. And you have to kind of go back, I suppose, to pre-2017, really, which is when brand registry didn't even exist. In terms of when we're looking at the hierarchy of when somebody creates a listing on Amazon and the control around all of the content that goes on to that listing. 

If you go back to, say, pre-2017, when Brand Registry wasn't there, the hierarchy was kind of like you had the original creator, then it would be Amazon vendor, then the trademark owner, then the manufacturer, and then any other sellers. And obviously, over the years, Amazon realised that they needed something a bit firmer in place to help control brands and give them support. So yeah, brand registry then started around 2017. And then between 2019 and 2020, there was a big shift where the hierarchy then became Amazon vendor kind of sat at the top. Then brand registry and the trademark owner would then sit second. So brand reg moved up quite high. Then it would be the ASIN creator. And then again, any other sellers. 

Now, the problem with that is that people with brand registry and have followed the trademark process and got their trademarks registered, and they then approved in Amazon's brand registry program, they were still having to fight against people who were on vendor first. So from 2021 then to almost the present day, that's changed. And actually quite recently, just as doing some due diligence before this today, I actually reached out to Brand Registry and spoke to them and just said out of interest, I said, you know, this is how we see the hierarchy in terms of how it's changed over the years. Is it any different to how I currently had it? And it actually was. 

They actually confirmed that now, in terms of the hierarchy of contributions that sit on Amazon today, it's the Amazon internal teams and vendor and brand registry all kind of sit as one. So the way they see it now is that brand registry, along with people who have listed on vendor and sold on vendor, as well as Amazon's own internal teams, they kind of share that operating space at the top. You then have like the ASIN creator and then below that than any other seller. So over the years, in terms of how the hierarchy has changed, it's changed quite a bit. And I say it's mainly because people who have gone through the trouble of registering a brand, putting it into brand registry, they want to be able to have that control, have their contributions showing on their listings and really be able to control that space. 

Paul Sonneveld
That is so interesting in terms of that evolution. In terms of right now, as a brand owner, what does that practically mean, right? Particularly sort of vendor versus seller. Maybe I'll sort of wrap my next question in there, which is there's certainly a perception that, oh, I'm a vendor, therefore I'm entitled to a lot more in terms of brand ownership and priority and all of that. But how does that really work out in practice today? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, so I mean, in terms of brand owners on Vendor and what it means and having that, you, vendor themselves actually control a lot of the content. And I suppose this may lead on to something else, which is in terms of like some misconceptions. But when you actually sell to Amazon vendor, you are giving up some of the control with them. And so what happens is that brand owners lose a lot of the contributions for their own listings because vendor will dictate what happens. 

You can request and depending on how your relationship is with vendor, you might have a vendor manager you can speak to and say, you know images you know descriptions bullet points titles, keywords phrases you want updating you want pushing through and they may just say no because it's amazon's decision. But it's not just about the content it's also about things like price. It could be video submissions it could be you know even things like on the back end like vital info but then also even the marketplaces that it's being sold in. So Amazon will dictate and decide where that's happening. So in terms of the control vendor do sit very, very high with that. And so in terms of their own decisions about where it goes, that is ultimately with them. 

Paul Sonneveld
Interesting. Yeah, no, it's I just realised that's there'll be three of these moments during the course of the show. I mean, it's that's a mindset that I don't often hear from vendors. They certainly have this mindset. They're the rent owner, you know, and all of that, right? Which makes me think like, you know, what are those, there must be a whole lot of misconceptions, right? That Amazon vendors have about brand control on Amazon. I mean, what are some, and you touched on some of them already, but what are some of those other misconceptions that you see day in, day out as you talk to your clients? 

Scott Bass
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is quite a lot of, I mean, and it's not just with Vendor. I suppose there's misconceptions on seller side as well, which is and around brand registry, what it means to control. But if we're going to start specifically with vendor, I suppose the misconceptions tend to be when people go on there is that this will be easy. It's less hassle. I'm going to let Amazon deal with this. There's less headaches because Amazon are taking control of this. And that's true to a point. 

But when it comes to the brand, they do often think, well, I'll still be able to decide my price. And that's not always the case. I'll still be able to decide because I'm the brand owner. Which marketplace this is being sold in if I just want to keep it in, say, for example, the UK. And that's not the case. If Amazon wants to then ship this over to Germany, France or anywhere in the EU, they have that right to do so. And yes, the big one to say around the content is that they can ultimately control and decide what happens with that. 

Now, the other part of this is the way Brand Registry has adapted, especially in the last two years, to help vendors with this. Because before 2025, you would have to have what's called admin rights on Brand Registry to be able to have the top-level permission in Brand Registry on vendor. Now, we know that there is another part to this on Brand Registry, which is the selling side, and that's all around managing your selling benefits, but that used to only apply to Seller Central. 

What we argued for a while was with Brand Registry, and we've said this to Amazon when we're an Amazon partner, we speak to them quite regularly, is that it doesn't make sense that you have basically you have two sides to brand registry you have the selling side and then you have the protection side the protection side is all about that admin role and permission in terms of how being an admin not a brand representative being an admin and being able to control not only who has access to your brand but you can remove people and but also it does link into the contributions. 

The other side of brand registry is the selling side. And this is the misconception that people have is that because they used to be linked and they're not now. So when it comes to the selling side, you were always able to just add in a merchant token from a seller central account and then link the brand in there, job done. And it didn't make sense that you just couldn't do this with vendor. Vendor just sat purely on the protection side where you had to have the admin and nothing else was available to you.

Brand registry have now updated this about a year or two ago where you now have the ability to add in a vendor code on the selling side so that you now can control both, which is great. Because you as a brand owner you may not want to give up your admin rights to somebody else but you do want them to be able to have contributions go through and unless you gave them that top level admin right it wouldn't go through. So you had to then do this whole selling side which on on on 3P. As I said you don't need to do that now Amazon brand registry have updated that and you're now able to control both and that's a lot lot better and works better for vendors and sellers.

Paul Sonneveld 
That is very interesting. I wasn't aware of that as well at all. And I'm hoping, I'm just going to imagine a lot of people tuning in going, right, I need to have a look at that. That is certainly, I mean, it's not in the expected place, right? So really, really interesting. So if we just sort of go back to the vendor side of the thing, fence, right? In certainly my experience, particularly as I'm troubleshooting issues with our vendor clients, right?

Products are not showing up on their manufacturing views, or net PPMs are coming through or you don't have access to certain reports. I mean, there must be like layers of kind of you know, brand registry set up and all of that. I mean, can you, I mean, to your best ability, it's a complex piece, but can you paint a bit of a picture of, you know, what are those different layers within brand registry and how do they really interact with, with vendor accounts? Really, I really, from a vendor point of view in terms of, you know, countries and vendor codes and, you know, all of, all of those considerations. 

Scott Bass
Yeah. So, I mean, the layers, as you kind of go deeper into it, it's essentially that you have, as I said, you've got two sides to it. You've got the vendor, sorry, you've got the, in brand registry, you've got the protection side and then you've got the selling side and they apply to both 1P, 3P. But in terms of how it kind of like the layers in terms of how it breaks down. So you have in on the protection side you've got everything that like encompasses administration rights, rights owner registered agent permissions. 

If you don't have the top level with that for a vendor and that this still happens today you will struggle to be able to control what's happening on your own content on vendor, even though there are still selling benefits which and actually they do make a difference. But then they don't it's it's a little bit complicated. But essentially as you layer it down on the protection side it's those three you have administrator rights owner registered agent. I would always say to anyone who's selling on amazon on vendor with your own brand you be the admin make sure you're the admin and make sure you control who else is. 

There's also then the whole point around the selling side, which then comes to around the brand representative. And you want to be that because that is the highest authority of permission on the selling side. So you need to have that. That is what essentially allows you to get through all of your content. The difficulty with vendor is that we know even to this day that as Amazon have added this other layer, this other level of like permission, if you like, even if you have brand representative status on the selling side with vendor, which is supposedly the highest level you can get, we know and we still say today with our clients we work with that if you're still not admin on the protection side with vendor you still can't get things through. 

So, when it comes to vendor when it comes to all the different things that you can see all the different things you can control. Whether that's, as i say all of the bits and pieces regarding pricing content where it's being sold. And of course ip protection and the ability to you know, say that somebody is selling a fake or a copyright, you need to have full level on both. And even then you can still have problems depending on how long ago that listing was even put into vendor. 

Because as I say, with vendor, it's invite only. So if you are going to look at being, you know, selling on vendor, it's invite only. So Amazon have to kind of approach you. But again, going back years ago, you know, when it's where we kind of started this 2017 and 2018, 2019, anyone could basically sell on vendor. And if there is still someone on there who's put a listing on there, unfortunately, those protections and those rights still apply to today. So they can still have a higher level of protection. So there's that side of it as well. There's a lot of layers to it. 

And so when someone comes to us and they say, I've got this problem in vendor, I don't see this, or I can't control this, no matter what it is, It's really, really important to go back through all these different layers, see what protection they have, see what rights they have, and also understand the history of the listings and know when those listings were originally put on and who buy. 

And it's amazing how many businesses we work with that often don't know this because they may be late to the party. Maybe they weren't the original sellers of their brand on Amazon. And then they'd come into it later on, and they weren't even aware that this was even a thing that they had to be aware of and that that's why they haven't got control. And that doesn't just apply to vendor, that's to seller as well. 

Paul Sonneveld
So are you saying there is a way to get visibility into history of listings and who has the ultimate rights on that? Talk to us a little bit about that. How do you get that visibility? Is that through brand registry itself or is that through another part of it? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, it's very difficult because if you ask brand registry, for example, is this brand in brand registry, they won't tell you. There are ways you can find that out. So if, for example, you are a brand and you want to sell your brand and put it into brand registry, If you get a rejection and it says, no, you can't do this because it's too closely matched to another brand that's in there. It could also be that somebody's previously tried to put your brand into brand registry. 

And so we then have to try and find that out. And this does happen. You know, we work with clients who come to us and they say, I don't know who put our you know our brand into brand registry maybe it was a member of the company who now no longer works for the business anymore that's a real common one when you know it would have been put over to maybe someone in marketing they've now left and so their email and their brand registry account is where actually sits all of these permissions so trying to divulge through that is hard and brand registry they just won't tell you. So it can be a lot of clawing through, tracking back. 

There's ways you can search for things on Amazon itself. But fortunately, we have good relationships with people within Amazon. And yet we've had quite a lot of experience with this. We know the sort of things to say and be able to show evidence of, look, we are genuine. We are the brand owners or we work with them. This is our brand we would we're just trying to make sure that this is being controlled and looked after correctly please work with us. 

And as I say, it takes a little bit of back and forth but eventually you'll find maybe someone in brand registry support who gets it and understands it and then they do tend to work with you then and then you'll be like yeah okay we can see that this was put in years ago. It was you know this is the email address that put it in great that was know sandra in marketing from i'll go and find out what she did with this account and yeah bring it back. 

Paul Sonneveld
Awesome. Yeah, it sounds like a little bit of forensic investigative work there. Tell me honestly, and actually before I ask this question, I'm seeing lots of comments flow through actually. I will get to them. I'll make sure that Chris doesn't leave. But yeah, if you do have questions as well, this is a very trippy topic. I haven't met a vendor who doesn't run into kind of roadblocks here. This is your time to ask a question. So pop them into our YouTube comment section which would be great. 

Tell me honestly, Scott, getting these things solved, easier done through the vendor route or the seller route? You know, to your point, like having to go through Amazon contacts and all of that, easier to pick up, I don't know, maybe like talk to your AVS person or your vendor manager, or, you know, let's just log a case with seller support, you know, where are you seeing easier wins? 

Scott Bass
It depends what the problem is, in all honesty. If it sits with brand registry, their brand registry support are very, very good. If it's a vendor problem, then yeah, if you have vendor support, you can speak to them. But then, as I say, it could be a multitude of problems. So depending on what it is, we know that in terms of, let's say if it's around a control problem, okay, so you've got, say, everything you need in brand registry, you've got the highest level of permission you can get, and you're selling on vendor, and maybe you've got a really good relationship with vendor, and it's going well, but you then get some sort of like at some point a letter from vendor. 

And this is another common one. You'll get an email from them saying that you can no longer sell on vendor. That is a big pull for us in terms of clients that come to us. And then what do we do? Because we've now got to set up what is the hybrid model. I've got to set up 3P and that does actually help you get a little bit more control because you dictate the price, you dictate the content, and it doesn't work the same as on vendor. So there's ways you can control a lot of problems by running a hybrid model. And we see a lot of success with that with our clients. And we do see as well when they run this hybrid model that their vendor performance increases as well as obviously their seller performance. So it kind of is like a win-win. That helps a lot with brand control. 

When it comes to anything to do with the specifics around trademark or the specifics around your brand in brand registry, they're always the best ones to go to. The problem is though, you will notoriously get this, start the process with brand registry support. You go through them. They'll say, this is not a brand registry issue. Speak to vendor support or speak to seller support. You go back to them. They will then say, that's not a brand registry. Sorry, that's not a vendor issue or a seller issue. Please go back to brand registry. And you'll find that you're just jumping between the two. 

What I would suggest is you just screenshot those messages from seller support where they've then said this, you put that back to brand registry. And we tend to find after three times of doing that, brand registry support will then go, okay, yes, we understand that. You've gone through the channels we've asked. Let's now look into the problem. And we do tend to find that the support you get in brand registry is a little bit more experienced than maybe that a vendor and that a seller. But then again, you might have a really good relationship with your vendors manager. And if you do, fantastic. Hold on to them with dear life because, you know, it's rare. But if you do, amazing. And yeah, you know, you can get some quick wins with them, too. 

Paul Sonneveld
I just want to press you a little bit more on the hybrid model. You mentioned that potential solve in certain situations. Are you able to go a little bit more specifically there? Like I'd love to understand maybe a specific case study of, you know, a particular issue where a hybrid approach might be one of the better answers in terms of solving a specific problem. 

Scott Bass
Yeah, absolutely. So we worked with one of the biggest household tech wash companies in the country. They came to us on vendor and they were doing, you know, very very well on vendor but they had a problem controlling other sellers. They also weren't happy with the minimum order quantities, they weren't happy with the purchase orders, they weren't happy with the price being sold at vendor and they came to us just not really knowing what to do they just wanted a little bit more brand presence and they wanted a bit a bit better performance. 

We basically set them up on Seller Central. We set up a hybrid model. We kept Vendor running. We kept Seller running. We never, ever run the same ASIN on both because you'll end up cannibalising the buy box. So we don't do that. But what we can do is we can basically take the listings that aren't performing as well or as well as they'd like, move them onto Seller. We did that. On moving them onto Seller then, we were then able to obviously optimize them, control the price, improve the content, add everything on. get them running and support them in basically running a hybrid model. 

When we did that, their performance of those listings improved over three hundred percent within a single year. After that year, vendor then saw all of these listings perform really well and actually they're doing really well. We're going to start making purchase orders on them now. And so we had a conversation with them then and said, look, It's your choice. Would you prefer to go onto vendor or seller? And for us, it always comes down to the same thing, which is margin. What works better for you? Is your margins better on vendor? Are your margins better on seller? We start there. And if it works better on vendor, fantastic. Keep it going on there. If it's better on seller, it makes more sense to be on there. 

From there we then build out you know again is it better for control is it better for ease do you have a good relationship with vendor in terms of where it goes and vendor has some amazing programs like PICS where you can just send them into one vendor you know unit and it can solve some problems and headaches for you. And it so it really comes down then to after we've solved the margin problem of what works better for you as a seller and again that will vary depending on who we work with. 

But in our experience running the hybrid model has had a lot of success and as i say it then helps sellers who've had listings who've performed quite badly vendors have been vendor then becomes interested in them again because they see them performing really well think actually we can now see the potential with this listing we're going to start making pos again on those listings. So yeah, and that's a kind of rinse and repeat we've done with quite a few different clients over the years. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big fan of the hybrid game. I'm not big on vendor bad, seller good or vice versa. It's like play both sides, be strategic about it. And a little fun though, in fact, some of you may not know is if you have a seller account and you've got brand registry sorted as well, you get access to a whole range of reports like the search query performance report, for example, one of my favorite reports these days that you don't get necessarily in vendor. 

So yeah. and will help you very helpful to drive your vendor business as well, absolutely. All right well look, we're getting towards the end of our episode so it's time for us to have a look at some of the questions. I'm going to try and bring them on screen here hopefully you can you can see them i'll try and read them out as well. This one comes from youtube uh from let's call this user Gustav thank you very much for your uh question and apologies if i got your name wrong. Just to clarify, my understanding is that I don't need to add sellers or vendors in brand registry for them to sell our products only if I want them to create listings or brand content, A plus, et cetera. 

Scott Bass
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, basically anyone can sell the products on Amazon, but it's all about the control. So you don't need to add a seller into your add them onto your Seller Central, a vendor account, and you don't need to add them in brand registry for them to be able to sell. It's more about the control. So if you work closely with, let's say, a reseller and you want them to be able to dictate certain content, it's worthwhile you adding them on in your own brand registry account and for your brand. Because it means that the content they then push through is more likely to go through. 

But i'd only suggest you do that if you've got a very very good close working relationship with them. You can obviously remove them from your own brand registry account whenever you want. And again this is something that another misconception we were kind of talking about before if you're the admin and the owner of your brand you will forever be the admin and owner of that brand. Adding other people on at different levels is completely controlled by you so you can bring someone on and if you don't you know let's say it doesn't work out working with them that's fine you can remove them from your brand registry and they won't be able to make those contributions anymore. 

Paul Sonneveld
Great answer. Let's move to a question from Victoria. I guess related to the question I asked you, how do you find out which seller or vendor originally created an ASIN? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, it's very difficult. Sometimes it can be quite easy. Sometimes it's not. And again, it depends on your time on Amazon. But yeah, it can be very, very tricky. Amazon won't tell you is the simple answer as well. So to protect them, they just won't tell you. There are tools you can use, certain programs within things like Helium 10, as well as other ones like Keeper that track the behavior and the ranking and sales price and things like that and history of a listing. And you can go back and have a look at that. But it will only go so far.

So if it's quite, let's say, going back to what we said in the beginning of this show, 2017 or before, you’re out who originally created it? The best way is to be able to say if you're late to the party with your own brand on Amazon, you're going to struggle finding out who originally created those listings. You can always see obviously who is a live seller on the featured offer and see who else has had an offer. But finding out who originally created it is a tricky one if you weren't the first one there basically. 

Paul Sonneveld
Great question, Victoria. Thank you. Just going on to Matt here. With brand registry, are there any categories of products on Amazon that do gain benefit from the transparency program and ones that can cause more issues than it'd be worth going through? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, it's a good question. Yeah. So transparency started out on Amazon as an anti-counterfeit program. Now, what's interesting with transparency is that when it originally started, we found that actually the major benefit we had with it was having a brand rep in there because you get a transparency rep. This rep works very closely with Amazon, works closely with brand registry, and works closely with Amazon so that when you have issues and problems with your brand, you could actually get them resolved quite quickly with a brand rep. That over the years has changed. It's a lot less hands-on now. The transparency program has evolved. And since then, there's like a dashboard, a portal, you go through there and you have less interaction with people. We do still have reps that we work very closely with. So if you ever did need any extra support, as I say, us as an agency, we have quite a close relationship with them. 

In terms of your question though the categories no there's no specific category i've ever really seen that makes, you know that would say yes this would work better for transparency or not transparency kind of works obviously globally. And what i would suggest is that if you are having problems controlling who is selling your products and you want to be able to control it better and have more oversight of it transparency is a viable option for you. And yeah, it's one that we work, as I say, very closely with our clients with full protection, full control. And yeah, as I say, it originally started out as an anti-counterfeit program, but we often find that the additional benefits were having a rep that you actually get to speak to. 

Paul Sonneveld
Awesome. Two more questions. One from Gerard here. I guess more from a technical lens or from a developer lens, he's asking when multiple contributors, vendors, sellers, legacy owners, distributors, all trying to push conflicting updates in terms of catalogue updates and the like, you know, how does the Amazon algorithm resolve it? You know, is it literally just going through the brand registry hierarchy or is there more to it? Yeah and i appreciate if you truly know the exact answer to this you could probably write a book and make a lot of money righ, but if best guess, how would you describe it? 

Scott Bass
So what you're talking about here is the Amazon algorithm in terms of how it decides which contributions it's going to push through okay. So the algorithm is determining multiple factors at a time and it will take into account the hierarchy we've talked about today. So when you're looking at the different hierarchy over the years to where it sits today, it will first of all take into account that once it's kind of past that stage, it will then absolutely do what you said it will then look at other people other sellers and it basically looks at what it deems to be the best content to push through. 

Amazon is all about wanting to make sure that its customers have got the best products for the best price and the best service so they keep coming back to Amazon. That's what they want. So the algorithm is always looking at that, but it sticks to the hierarchy first and then it will then pull in however it determines and what it sees to be the best. How the algorithm determines that is then another level of an aspect that a lot of people aren't aware of, which is things like even down to how you run your Amazon account. 

So when we work with multiple clients, we stress the importance of having a really good, healthy account. Many people aren't aware of how important it is to make sure that your NCX rate, your account health, your on time delivery your compliance even down to like how your account is set up with KYC and the business you know the way it's set up is all healthy and good that is another determining factor because if it comes down to you and another seller or another vendor and those so it just it's just those two points it will obviously choose the one that has the best standing account in the best health in the best shape. So it's a really important one as well but there's there's obviously multiple things. But yeah, it will always start off with the hierarchy and then yeah take into account those other points as well 

Paul Sonneveld
I was just saying thank you for that answer. There's a few more flowing in. So I'm just going to try. I know we're over time. So those of you that have to go, you can watch the watch of this on demand afterwards. We'll send you an email. So don't stress. But the questions are great. Just want to call out Matty, Victoria, Gerard. Thank you for all your and Gustav, thank you for your questions. We're just going to do two more. And then we're going to have to wrap it up, unfortunately. But really, really appreciate it. 

Question from Maddy here is, do you know methods to have old brand stores removed from now defunct accounts without access to those original accounts that set them up? You know, it's a little bit like you were talking about, you know, the marketing person back in 2021. They did something that person's long gone. The email is gone. Hard to recover. What do you, I mean, you'll probably come across this in your line of work. What's your approach? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, we've had this before. We work with a shoe seller and also an apparel clothing company who came over from the US and had this exact same problem. So it can be done. Absolutely. You have to basically first of all, go through and prove a brand registry. You have control and the rights to that brand. You can then go through and say that this store on here you wish to have deleted and removed. 

And again they may ask you for certain certification if that brand store is not connected to your account anymore or never was that you are effectively the you know certificate the trademark owner if you can then prove that all to them they can then remove that and then you can create your own one and then when you create your own one obviously that will be then tied in again with your listings your products on your account. 

And yet there are ways around it. It can be, again, a lot of back and forth. What I would stress is with anything like this is when you're speaking to support is to just not give up. If you've got the rights, if you've got the proof, you've got the certification, you will eventually speak to somebody who will be able to help you within Amazon. And failing that, come find us, speak to us, and we'll help you get it resolved. 

Paul Sonneveld
When it comes to logging Amazon cases and you know, my motto is persistence beats resistance, right? So eventually, eventually you'll get somewhere. All right, last but certainly not least, last question from Victoria here. I mean, this is really interesting question because Chris talks to the much broader piece around how do you do hybrid strategy? What are the elements to that? But I guess this can be a teaser to a future episode because we're probably due for another hybrid. What does hybrid look like in 2026? But in terms of her question, once you put an ASIN on seller, do you leave it available on vendor or make it unavailable? 

Scott Bass
Yeah. So this is the one that, again, when we're looking at the hybrid model, when we're setting up, one of the most daunting things, I suppose, for people is, well, how do I sort the logistics of this? What is the process? So what we say is if you're going to go, let's say, take an ASIN off vendor and you're going to put it on seller, let those POs run out, let the stock run out in vendor first. So it's out of stock. Don't answer any more POs for that ASIN. You just ignore it. You have it then on seller, you put the stock live in seller. Again, what you can do is to have a nice transition, have the listing on seller ready, not active with any stock. 

Once that vendor stock has run out, you leave it on there, but then yes, you can then put the stock in, put it live on seller. And as i mentioned before you don't want to have the same asin with stock on both seller and vendor because you're just going to end up having you're going to be fighting yourself on vendor and seller on the buy box and there's a thing called the buy box yo-yo where it actually goes between vendor, seller and other sellers that affects the algorithm. 

So another level to what we talked about before in terms of ranking and what how Amazon size it. Amazon doesn't actually like the yo-yo effect it's not good if you can keep yourself there always at that featured offer that's the best way. So yeah let it run out of stock you can have it sit in there and sell already but just not with active stock. Once it's run out of vendor have then the stock available and seller and off you go. 

Paul Sonneveld
Great, great advice there, Scott. Very practical. And on that note, I just want to say thank you so much. I mean, I think this session was incredibly practical. You know, and for those of you tuning in, you know, managing your vendor accounts or supporting vendor clients, you know, brand control is really no longer a theoretical issue. It directly impacts content accuracy, retail readiness, performance, you know, ultimately brand equity. So understanding how this all works together and the role of brand registry is absolutely essential if you want to avoid unpleasant surprises. 

Now, I do imagine that some of you might be struggling with real challenges, and you've tried it, and you've just got nowhere. And you'd love to continue the conversation with Scott, you know, and tap into his world of knowledge. So my question for you, Scott, is what's the easiest way, the lowest friction way for any of our listeners just to get in touch with you, just to sort of knock through some of their specific issues in a bit more depth? 

Scott Bass
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anyone who's got any questions or any concerns. So we have a few ways you can get in touch. Obviously, there's our website. You can create, you know, obviously there's a form on there you can complete that will come through to us. And then yet we can pick up and have a conversation with you about it, call you back. We also run a Seller's Cafe over at our Birmingham office as well, so that you can actually book in with us and have a conversation with us face to face at our Birmingham office. Just talking about any problems, concerns, or also, you know, whether you want to come and work with us and the benefits of working with an agency. But you can also get me on LinkedIn. And yeah, you know, there's a few different ways, but as I say, the website tends to be the main one. 

Paul Sonneveld
Awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Scott. Really appreciate your time today. 

Scott Bass
Yeah. No, thank you very much for having me on. Thank you. 

Paul Sonneveld
All right, everyone, this is the end of today's episode. If you found this valuable, make sure that you register for future Marketplace Master Sessions. Remember, if you did register already for this one, you'll receive a link to the recording afterwards so that you can revisit some of these insights and some of the finer points that Scott made and perhaps even share them on your team.
 
If you are on YouTube right now or you're watching it, make sure you subscribe and like our channel. And with that, I just want to thank you for joining us live, especially those who contributed in the form of questions and really challenged the thinking and pushed us forward. Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you at our next live episode of Marketplace Masters. Take care.