Q1 Amazon Events:

February 26-27: White Label World Expo

Starting February 26-27, the White Label World Expo is taking place in Las Vegas. The conference provides the perfect opportunity for professional online sellers to shmooze and mingle with white label goods’ suppliers. This Expo is happening again in Frankfurt May 6-7, and in Asia in September.

February 27- March 1: Unconference

The Unconference is happening in Orlando, FL the weekend of February 27-March 1. This is a great networking conference for Amazon sellers and families are also welcome!

March 10-11: Amazon World Convention

The Amazon World Convention will be held March 10-11 in Munich, Germany. This is part of the Internet World Expo which drew in 19,000 visitors last year. This is a Amazon seller conference that will be filled with sales strategies, tips on how to grow your store, and how to become an overall stronger Amazon seller.

March 12-13: European Seller Conference

Continuing the Europe trend, The European Seller Conference will be taking place in Prague, March 12-13. Amazon sellers from all over will be coming to this conference and it will be filled with speakers, events, and great learning experiences.

UPDATED: Prosper Show has been moved to August 31- September 2
At the end of August, the 23-25, there will be the Prosper Show in Las Vegas, NV. The Prosper Show is great for established Amazon sellers who are working on growing their businesses. This Amazon seller conference is going to be filled with speakers and multiple learning opportunities.

Q2 Amazon Events

UPDATED: All events moved to October 2020

In October, the Global Sources Exhibition will be held in Hong Kong. Over the course of October there will be four different conferences held relating to the different specialized trades:

October 11-14: Consumer Electronics

October 18-21: Mobile Electronics

October 27-30: Lifestyle

October 27-30: Fashion

May 6-8: Sellers Summit LIVE EVENT POSTPONED
Virtual Event still available!

May 6-8 will be the Sellers Summit in Ft Lauderdale, FL. This conference aims to teach you in two days what it takes many sellers to learn in many months and even years. The idea is to have this be more of an intensive workshop that will truly have you walk away feeling like you have gained some helpful tools that will help you transform your Seller experience.

UPDATED: October 21-22 White Label Expo
The White Label World Expo is happening again in Frankfurt, October 21-22, 2020. This is an event for professional online sellers, including Amazon sellers, to meet with white label goods suppliers.

UPDATED: IRCE @ RetailX IS CANCELLED

The IRCE @ RetailX live conference has been cancelled. There is still a virtual event you can attend.

Q3 Amazon Events

July 16-18: SellerCon

July 16-18 will be the “biggest Amazon seller event of 2020”, SellerCon. This is a conference that brings in successful Amazon sellers, big names in the industry, and a variety of people who are exceptional in this field. Over the last six years over 15,000 Amazon sellers have attended SellerCon. This is an overall great conference to partake in to help learn the ins and outs of the Amazon world.

July 17-18: Midwest e-Com

Midwest e-Com will be in Minneapolis, MN on July 17-18. This is a conference that is geared towards all e-commerce sellers. There will be Amazon sellers from all over the States and abroad at all different levels coming to participate and listen to the speakers and learn from the community.

UPDATED: Resonate IS CANCELLED

The September 15-16 Amazon seller conference in Atlanta, Georgia, the Resonate conference put on by SellerLabs has been cancelled.

There are more conferences throughout the year and we will do our best to update as they come up through our Facebook page. Make sure to buy your tickets soon – you do not want to miss out on a lot of these great opportunities to grow yourself as an Amazon seller.

Over the course of the next few years, Amazon attempted to fix this problem. The solution that they created was called gating, or as it’s better known as Brand Gating.

So what is Amazon Brand Gating, how brand gating on Amazon work, and how to get your brand gated on Amazon?

Brand Gating Amazon is the way in which Amazon blocks unauthorized sellers from selling brand name products. A seller needs to verify that they have been authorized by the manufacturer to sell these products. If a third-party seller wants to sell Birkenstocks on Amazon, the seller needs to showcase they are authorized to do so by Birkenstock. The main goal of brand gating is to eventually remove those selling counterfeit items under the same ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) as the real item and disassociate them from the real brand.

There are also gated categories and ASINs within Amazon. If you are a long-standing Amazon seller, it is easier to sell these items because you have a good standing with Amazon central.

How to Become a Gated Brand on Amazon:

In order to become Brand Gated, you need to first join the Amazon Brand Registry. Once you are part of the registry, Amazon will go through a verification process to ensure that you have the proper trademarks and qualifications.

For brand gating on Amazon, you will need to provide the registered trademark for every Amazon marketplace that you wish to sell on. You will need to provide Amazon with ASINs that you want to be gated and provide ways you have handled issues surrounding counterfeit versions of your items.

When it comes to brand gating on Amazon, the tech-giant may want a detailed explanation of how you have attempted to thwart counterfeiters from your brand, as this is the goal of Amazon’s Brand Gating.  For Amazon brand registry search, CLICK HERE.

As an overview of the process, that is how to get your brand gated on Amazon.

How to be an Amazon Gated Seller:

If you want to be a seller on a Brand Gated item or a restricted item, you will need to provide documentation. This documentation can be your wholesale invoices (ideally from the last 90 days), monetary fees, a letter from the manufacturer that states approval for you to sell on Amazon’s platform, or of course other forms of documentation.

Your seller rating will be taken into consideration when Amazon is deciding to give you an approval or not. To become an authorized third-party seller you will need to request the approval first, which can be done through Amazon Seller Central. If you are denied, you are able to reapply every few months and ideally during that time your seller rating may likely improve. And that is how to get brand gated on Amazon in 2021.

If you do decide to sell a gated item without approval, there is a chance that Amazon will suspend your account while they investigate. That’s how serious brand gating Amazon is.

For smaller labels that do not have the same pull as huge brand names, you may receive an email from them specifically threatening legal action. Again, the main goal of Amazon’s gated items is to put an end to the counterfeit items. Hence, brand gating should be recognized by sellers.

Amazon Gated Categories & Products

Amazon Gated includes a variety of brands, categories, subcategories, & products, and some ASINs are restricted as well.

According to Amazon’s Seller Central, there are a few categories that require approval to sell, but within those categories, there are massive amounts of items which can then be sold.

These are the categories, sub-categories, and products that are presently gated on Amazon:

• Fine Art
• Services
• Jewelry
• Watches
• Made in Italy
• Music & DVD
• Postage stamps
• Collectible Coins
• Sports Collectibles
• Video, DVD, & Blu-ray
• Streaming Media Players
• Entertainment Collectibles
• Join Amazon Subscription Boxes
• Personal Safety and Household products
• Holiday Selling Requirements in Toys & Games
• Requirements for selling Automotive & Powersports products

Also some subcategories within Beauty and Health. There are instances when you could be approved for a category but then not have approval for certain subcategories. Amazon does not have a list of every single category, subcategory and ASIN that is gated. The way to find the restricted items is by simply trying to sell it and Amazon will show you if it is restricted to your seller account or not.

There are also products that require approval that are not within specific categories. You would be required to have approval for these items:

Certain items in the Software category:

• Laser pointers and related products in any category
• Hoverboards products in any category

So, now you have the approval to sell one of these gated products or has properly dealt with brand gating Amazon process, your next move should be ensuring your pricing is competitive and the best way to do that is to use a repricer like Seller Snap.

Ensuring your price is competitive means you could potentially share the Buy Box. Hence an Amazon price strategy or Amazon repricing strategies should be adapted.   

There are a few Amazon price strategies you can look to when trying to understand your pricing needs. Of course, the general goal for sellers is to make sales. There are many ways to go about this, but there are a few ‘most effective’ ways to figure out your Amazon price strategy, and understanding these Amazon repricing strategies will make you a better Amazon seller overall.

Repricing Strategies: A Brief History

There are a few ways to reprice on Amazon with the help of reliable Amazon price strategies. You can either manually reprice (which is not recommended for sellers with more than a few items), or you can use a repricer. Most competitive sellers opt for a repricing solution. There are two kinds of repricers; rules and conditions based or you can use an AI algorithmic repricer, like Seller Snap, that learns what your competitor’s rules and conditions are and uses them to earn you a higher share of the Buy Box at the highest possible price. Algorithmic repricers also allow for rules and conditions if need be.

Rules-based repricer logic is set up and optimized by the user. Requiring consistent motoring and tweaking. This can be time-consuming depending on how many items are in your store. This type of repricing can lead to price wars and a race to the bottom ( where competitors end up undercutting each other by a penny back and forth).

AI algorithmic repricers work at understanding and predicting your competition’s decisions and learns from them to help capture the Buy Box. In general, AI algorithmic repricers are a bit more expensive and are recommended for sellers who have greater amounts of inventory. 

Sellers sorting out Amazon price strategies should highly consider having a repricer that is automated and AI powered.

Repricing is an important part of staying competitive in the Amazon game. There are other factors that are important as well. For example, simply being an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) seller increases your Buy Box chances. In addition, your shipping prices and customer reviews matter as well. There are many factors when it comes to gaining the Buy Box, but it is not an impossible feat!

Dynamic Amazon Pricing Strategy

When you’re thinking of your Amazon repricing strategy you want to make sure that you have all the pieces in place. In this article, we’ve touched on many factors that can impact your Buy Box chances, from customer reviews to pricing and all the in-between.

Now let’s look at some other factors. Is the ASIN you are selling also being sold by other sellers? If there are multiple sellers creating competition, having a repricer that actively reprices for you will help with your chances of capturing the Buy Box and making sales. Look at your competition – see their reviews, see what their shipping time seems to be, having a good shipping time is really beneficial in gaining the Buy Box.

Selling products through FBA definitely contributes to gaining the Buy Box. In terms of your Amazon repricing strategy, having FBA items could be a beneficial move. The reason FBA has a higher Buy Box chance is that these items can be offered to Prime Members and with the benefit of expedited shipping time. If an item is Prime and shipped by Amazon then it will arrive faster, which is part of Amazon’s customer-first mentality.

If Amazon thinks you are a trustworthy seller, your customers think you are a trustworthy seller and they have given you good reviews, you will be on your way to win the Buy Box. Being an overall good seller will help your chances at the Buy Box.

In order to make and maintain sales, you need to be in the Buy Box. In order to be in the Buy Box, you need a variety of things, and reviews from your sales are part of that equation. Involving a repricer in your Amazon repricing strategy will help with the constant price fluctuations that happen due to other sellers using repricers. Being able to keep up and gaining a higher share of the Buy Box is the way to stay competitive in the Amazon game.

Once you have started using a repricer and seeing the data that it can provide you with, you will understand why having a repricer is so important. Seller Snap provides robust analytics to help you to understand your store and to better help you gain the Buy Box.

It’s not about one specific thing, it is a plethora of factors that come together to help you gain the Buy Box. Let your repricer help you do the extra work so you can focus on the other pieces of your Amazon Business. 

The Challenges of Repricing Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)

The e-commerce industry is growing at a rapid rate, with an increasing number of people joining the Amazon “goldrush”. With this ever-growing industry, a new language has emerged and it is filled with confusing terminology and abbreviations.

What Is FBA, FBM, And SFP?

Amazon Prime Seller Fulfilled is a wise and cost-effective choice to switch to SFP to manage your business more efficiently. However, there are certain Seller Fulfilled Prime requirements that need to be met to qualify for SFP.

Here below are Seller Fulfilled Prime requirements sellers should take note of:

• In the trial period, it is mandatory to sell at least 300 products
• You need a 99% on-time/no delay shipping record
• You must use ‘Buy Shipping’ services for at least 95% of your total orders
• Your cancellation rate should not be more than 1% of total orders.
• Once all the Seller Fulfilled Prime requirements are met, you are eligible for SFP.

Automated Repricing for SFP 

SFP offers a great opportunity to save money on fulfillment costs, while still enjoying the benefits of having the “Prime” badge, and most importantly, winning the Buy Box at a higher price.

However, SFP creates a real challenge for 3rd party Amazon repricing solutions. The biggest problem is that Amazon’s API and price change notifications provide very detailed data on the lowest offers on a listing and on the fulfillment method of each seller. Nonetheless, the identity of the Buy Box winner doesn’t take SFP status into account. This means that if you have a competitive FBA offer, your repricer might think you are winning the Buy Box, even though at the same time there is an SFP offer that’s $0.01 cheaper that is winning the Buy Box in major cities. This will result in such companies gaining a big chunk of your sales.

One solution for this problem, though not ideal, is to add a price restriction to your repricing method to ensure that you are not pricing too high compared to the lowest SFP offer.

On the other hand, you might have an SFP offer that is competing with FBA offers. In this case, one alternative strategy is to set a rule to follow the “general” Buy Box price, (meaning the Buy Box that doesn’t take shipping address into account), while using the lowest discount that will guarantee you win the Buy Box in geographic regions where you offer Prime.

Want to learn more about repricing strategies for SFP?

Contact Seller Snap to talk to one of our experts.

Click Here

Seller Snap and Game Theory Repricing are a genuine step forward in Amazon repricing technology, providing a fresh and effective approach to a long-standing problem: how to compete effectively on the Amazon marketplaces without driving prices into the ground.