About ten years ago, there was no brand registry yet, and it was the wild west of amazon sellers making their own items, variety packs, bundles, kits, gift boxes, and so forth. many of them were great ideas, and often entire businesses were developed off of this strategy. Over time, many desperate sellers who don't know how to build a value enhancing bundle just did things like making a 2 pack of a common item, and then adding some mints or a plastic item from alibaba and calling it a bundle. I never thought those were a good idea, but the idea of two packing items to save on shipping costs is and was a great idea. A lot of sellers abused greatly the GENERIC item idea, which was that you could just make whatever you wanted and call it generic, and amazon would then give you a monopoly on that item while people doing it legitimately in brand registry had to jump through insane hurdles.

There were also were a few companies, like ours, that provided a service for other smaller producers, by allowing them to list on amazon under their brand name with a bundle, A+ content, and marketing that they didn't have the access to. My company specialized in that, and many of our customers are brands that are out of the country that want exposure on amazon, but don't want to or can't do the compliance paperwork, the importing, customs, FDA, packaging, etc... We provide a great service for those companies and have for many years. Customers have loved us making items that are double packed or come in sampler kits so they can try all flavors, etc.

That is over now. A great idea that has made amazon into what it is today with tons of innovation is now just going to go the way of walmart. Want a variety pack of chips? Well, you get whatever frito lays makes. If they don't make that one, you don't get it. Want to get your dawn dish soap cheaper by buying a 3 pack and getting one lemon, one ocean mist, and one green garden scent? Nope, they don't make that, and the one place that's an authorized distributor is now a monopoly, so expect prices to go up and innovation to go down.

This was never about amazon protecting consumers and making them get higher quality bundles. if they wanted to do that, they could have culled out bad actors long ago. All one needs is an algorithm that is like common sense. If a seller has 46 feedbacks and 30 are negative in the last month, that seems obvious that they aren't offering something that will "delight" customers.

The GENERIC bundle policy is long over due, many people have exploited that and taken massive advantage over a loophole that I always knew was going to blow up badly. Others on here have predicted that too. The bundling custom things under established brand registry businesses I don't understand at all, those are value adding.

Its not at all safe to send product into amazon's FBA system. You risk arbitrary and capricious rules being passed at any time that will completely destroy you. Amazon gives no indicaton on where they're going and no warning. Things just happen here. Best to get out now.

We are halting operations after 11 years on the platform and tens of millions of dollars sold. Just not worth it anymore.