6 Steps To Protect Your Amazon Product Listing From Hijackers

I love sharing my experiences and strategies of selling on Amazon. There are so many great things about it (like the potential profit, the ability to sell and not touch inventory, the way Amazon handles fulfillment and provides millions of customers, etc), that people will often think it is too good to be true. Why isn’t everyone selling on Amazon, they wonder? This leads to two of the most common questions: is it too competitive already, and for those who know the Amazon lingo, what should I do about someone who hijacks my listing?

These questions give me a chuckle. And then I give my answers: Amazon is a huge and ever-evolving marketplace where new opportunities emerge every day; and do not let “hijackers” deter you from getting started, as it is a false roadblock that can be avoided.

I believe that it is very important to do a competitive analysis before you enter any business, or select any product to sell on Amazon, but it is not smart to worry about an ever-present but ambiguous threat of competitive “hijackers”.

Remember when you were young, maybe you were afraid of some imaginary boogeyman who came out at night while you were sleeping….maybe kept you up, gave you nightmares, or had you jet off into your parents bed. Did the boogeyman ever get you? No? I didn’t think so….My point is, don’t let some abstract fear hold you back from selling on Amazon, there are steps that we can take to protect ourselves and prosper!  There definitely are people who can hijack your listing on Amazon, but we can take preemptive steps to make it difficult for them to do so.

In this post, I want to review what Amazon hijackers do, and how you can protect yourself and take action should something happen.

What does it mean to have your listing “hijacked”?

In short, having a listing hijacked generally means that someone is selling a counterfeit or similar version of your private label product. This is particularly frustrating to a private label seller, as we took the effort to create our own brand and product specifically so we can avoid having to compete with other Amazon sellers to earn the Buy Box.

What is the Buy Box?

Amazon will automatically designate one seller the default seller of a product. If a customer clicks the “Add to Cart” button, the seller that owns the Buy Box will get the sale (unless the customer specifically changes to purchase from a different seller). Because customers will rarely opt for a different seller of an identical product, “owning” the Buy Box is a tremendous advantage in boosting your revenue.

Hijacking example

Let’s take a look at what this actually means. I found a random example of an item that has two sellers (it should have only one seller, as it is a private label product).

When we search Amazon for “bamboo wood cutting board”, we see the following results:

And clicking through on that result, you can see that there are two sellers for these cutting boards:

If we click through to see who the two sellers are, we can compare the sellers side by side:

Based on the number of seller reviews and who created the Greener Chef brand, it looks like the original seller and the creator of the private label brand is called GREENER BRANDS. They are competing against a seller called Nakeing.

Here are the two product pages for each seller, first this from GREENER BRANDS:

And this, slightly more expensive, from Nakeing:

So in this case, Nakeing is probably hijacking the listing for these cutting boards, because they are not getting the cutting boards manufactured and imported, but instead selling a version of cutting boards that is what GREENER BRANDS created and sells.

Just a note, I do not know these brands and certainly do not know this for sure, I just wanted to use this as an example for this blog post.  

So Nakeing is selling these cutting boards, which may be the exact cutting boards that are in the listing or a counterfeit version that they just send to unknowing customers. If you own the GREENER BRANDS brand, this can be a serious problem, because you are losing sales to someone who is piggybacking off of your hard work of finding a product and selling it successfully on Amazon.

Impact of hijacking

To make matters worse, an unsuspecting customer may purchase your cutting boards, but instead of buying from you, your listing hijacker (ie Nakeing in this example) owns the Buy Box and they receive a counterfeit version of your cutting boards! They are unhappy with their purchase, and leave a negative review on your listing! So you get a bad review for something that you don’t even sell, and this bad review could deter future visitors from not purchasing your product.

This could derail your successful product if it continues. Of course, you don’t ever want to find yourself in this position to start with, so let’s explore the precautions you can take to prevent this situation.

How to Deter Listing Hijackers

1. Monitor Your Listing Closely

They don’t call it “Amazon” for nothing–things can get wild out there! Whether you are walking through the Amazon forest, or the ecommerce superstore, heed this advice: be aware of your surroundings at all times!

Beyond just checking in on your Seller Central dashboard every day, you will want to see your listing from your customers point of view. How many sellers are selling your private label product. If it’s more than one (that one seller being you!), then you may have a hijacker situation on your hands….you don’t need to check your listing every day, but periodically will be sufficient, especially as your sales start to ramp up and others may note your success.

Additionally, if you notice any sudden dips in sales from your Seller Central dashboard, that could be an indication of something amiss.

Invest In Your Brand

Building your brand can be a great solution to deterring hijackers. You can do this in several ways.

2. Build Your Own Ecommerce Site

If you are able to create your own ecommerce channel outside of Amazon (sites like Shopify or Square Space make it easy to set up your own ecommerce store), you can avoid the riff raff of Amazon hijackers. This is a great long term strategy as well, so that you can start building your own customer base that you can contact directly, and not be fully reliant on the traffic and rules of Amazon.

Amazon offers a white label fulfillment service, so you can have customers check out completely on your site and then have the item fulfilled by Amazon. Or you can send the customer directly to your Amazon product page to check out.

3. Brand Your Products Better

If you create better branding on your product listing, and show that you have a distinct brand and logo on the actual product, and the packaging, you may deter the lurking pirate. The reason for this is because you are clearly demonstrating the brand to the customer, and if they order your product from a counterfeit seller, then it is immediately apparent that their product may not have the branding that your product should have.

So when you are taking your product photos, do your best to show off the branding on the packaging and the product itself. This is a best practice regardless, as you are investing in developing the brand and your marketing collateral, you might as well show this off to your customers!

Here’s a great example of a well-branded private label brand that I came across in the Jungle Scout Product Database:

You can see that not only do they show the brand in the product itself, the packaging, but also in the product listing and product description. Despite being a private label brand, they convey to the consumer in this niche that their product is a “brand name” product.

4. Register Your Brand with Amazon

One helpful step to protect yourself against hijackers is to register your brand with Amazon. It is a very straightforward process that I have covered before in webinars and blog posts.  You can simply go to the page to register your Amazon brand and fill out some basic information, like below:

One thing that you will need to have or create is a company website, which you can do quickly and cheaply with Shopify or Square Space if you want a site to also do ecommerce transactions, or even just a WordPress or Unbounce landing page would suffice.

It is important to note, and Amazon states this clearly: “Enrolling a brand in the Brand Registry and registering as the brand owner does not prevent other sellers from selling the branded products.”

Ultimately, once you have registered your brand, you will be able to control your listing, and less likely that someone will change your product listing without consent. And if someone sells a counterfeit product, and it is proven (with photos and descriptions), then you can have the hijacker’s listing removed.

5. Contact the Seller Directly: Cease And Desist

This point is perhaps the most important, so glad that you made it here. And it is simply this: contact the seller directly and ask them to remove the post. Yup, that simple, yet very effective.

You can contact the seller through the link on their profile, which you can access here, in their Seller Profile. This is how you get to the Seller's Profile:

And you can contact them like this:

Example

And when contacting them, it is best to be short, friendly, and to-the-point. Here is an example template of what I would send (we can pretend that this is for Jungle Stix), feel free to use this verbatim, or edit as you need:

 

Hi {Seller Name},
I see that you are also selling Jungle Stix. However, I have created the Jungle Stix brand from scratch, and have never resold any wholesale items to any other reseller.

 

I own the brand, and have not authorized you or anyone else, to sell Jungle Stix on Amazon.

 

If you are selling a different brand, while posturing as Jungle Stix, then you are selling counterfeit products, which is something that Amazon takes very seriously and will shut down your account without warning.

 

If you do not remove your product from the Jungle Stix listing within 24 hours, I will have to contact Amazon and issue a formal Cease and Desist letter. This is obviously not an ideal situation for either of us, so I hope that you take heed to this note and remove your product from Jungle Stix listing immediately.

 

Thank you for your prompt attention.

 

Sincerely,

 

Greg Mercer, CEO @ Jungle Stix

And that is basically as much as you can say and then the ball is in the hijackers hands….if they do not respond or act accordingly, you will want to contact Amazon directly. And that brings us to our last action to address listing hijackers….

6. File a Complaint With Amazon

You can submit a complaint with Amazon with one form. You will have to gather your evidence, which means purchase the product from the offending seller, document all the ways in which it is counterfeit and deceitful, and submit it to Amazon.

Be as thorough as possible here, with as many photos and details as you can muster, comparing your product to the product that you received from the hijacker. Keep in mind that Amazon wants to protect its customer experience as much as possible, so if it is clear that someone who purchases a fake version of your product will not be happy with the purchase, then they will act on that. This may take time and back and forth, so not my ideal course of action.

Conclusion

Having to deal with the shady seller with questionable principles is the unfortunate side of selling on Amazon. There will be people who want to prey on others success and turn a quick dollar, however, I think that there is too much hay to be made to worry about these people as my main priority. If you follow the steps outlined above, and continue moving forward with developing a strong brand with well-curated products and marketing strategies, your success will overshadow the hijackers who feast on the crumbs they can gather from you. Onwards!