Unfair busniess pratice in toys and games.
Hello, like other sellers we have been here for over a decade. We have various products and one separate from our others is toys. Specifically, novelty desk toys but a particular type. When we launched we found out the hard way (financially) to get a specific description in the title for marking and search results you had to have a brand in tht tile. And so we spent YEARS and thousands of dollars in investing and applying for the proper trade marks for each order design we created. We waited months, and a few cases years acquiring the actual brand names as a description to portray each item with proper title. A desciptive. I have 27 years of marketing expereince and thought this would be worth the investment, and for years it was, until recently. For 5 weeks our sales nearly halted for all titles that were altered by amazon.
The unfairness claim I make is clear, they removed brand names that we hold (yes they are registered) but the unfairness comes in with the behemoth toy companies such as Mattel and Hasbro to name but two, there are others. Where they are allowed to have their many brand names in the title but we aren't.
Each Monday, after a weekend we would have 20-50 orders at minimum, now we are lucky if we have three. They are ruining our business our sales.
We have submitted multiple cases and we get told in email "Your brand was identified as having an opportunity to improve conversion and sales by bringing other information to the forefront."
The brand was the descriptive, and we went by the rules years ago. NOW, we have no descriptive in the title at all, and again, companies such as Hasbro and Mattel are allowed their many brands to be in the title, we are not.
This is clearly unfair business practice, and they don't care, we are on 5 WEEKS, they've killed our sales.
Thank you for reading!
Unfair busniess pratice in toys and games.
Hello, like other sellers we have been here for over a decade. We have various products and one separate from our others is toys. Specifically, novelty desk toys but a particular type. When we launched we found out the hard way (financially) to get a specific description in the title for marking and search results you had to have a brand in tht tile. And so we spent YEARS and thousands of dollars in investing and applying for the proper trade marks for each order design we created. We waited months, and a few cases years acquiring the actual brand names as a description to portray each item with proper title. A desciptive. I have 27 years of marketing expereince and thought this would be worth the investment, and for years it was, until recently. For 5 weeks our sales nearly halted for all titles that were altered by amazon.
The unfairness claim I make is clear, they removed brand names that we hold (yes they are registered) but the unfairness comes in with the behemoth toy companies such as Mattel and Hasbro to name but two, there are others. Where they are allowed to have their many brand names in the title but we aren't.
Each Monday, after a weekend we would have 20-50 orders at minimum, now we are lucky if we have three. They are ruining our business our sales.
We have submitted multiple cases and we get told in email "Your brand was identified as having an opportunity to improve conversion and sales by bringing other information to the forefront."
The brand was the descriptive, and we went by the rules years ago. NOW, we have no descriptive in the title at all, and again, companies such as Hasbro and Mattel are allowed their many brands to be in the title, we are not.
This is clearly unfair business practice, and they don't care, we are on 5 WEEKS, they've killed our sales.
Thank you for reading!
2 replies
Seller_NbYSGJ8Tehgbv
An extremely popular pre-workout supplement brand does something that I like to call "Paying Rent".
They have a listing for their pre-workout powders that is exclusive to just Amazon...no other Amazon seller can join the listing. If you try, you get a message that you must apply to sell this product and Amazon is not accepting applications right now.
This is done by "paying rent" through a platform known as Vendor Central. The fee for this is well in the 6 figures.
Big brands such as Hasbro and Mattel have this kind of competitive advantage because they are big brands equipped with millions of dollars in investments. The same is such for advertising. These brands have monthly budgets of around 50,000 USD for the sake of obtaining market share. They are expecting major losses for the sake of profits years down the road.
You are correct. This is unfair. However, in my opinion, this advantage is not absolute.
I was able to witness a marketing agency, single handedly, bring down a New York based energy drink start up to bankruptcy because they were clueless on how to spend their 30,000 USD per month budget.
I was in absolute shock when I saw this advertising agency present a .01 CTR with 20,000 impressions as a positive.
The only thing I can offer to your post is that there is always a path a brand can take and it takes a ton of knowledge of the platform to discover that path. Its not universal and requires a ton of troubleshooting with your own Amazon practices to play the game better than Hasbro or Mattel.
Danny_Amazon
Hello @Seller_RH5P8CqOqaNrO- and thank you for taking the time to share this feedback with the community here on the seller forums.
This page has some guidance on title requirements and the inclusion of brand names that may be impacting your products, if it proves helpful. If not, you could also share a case ID that is open with our support teams so I can take a closer look!
Thanks,
Danny
