Amazon restricts some brands and categories: you need its approval before you can list them. A gated brand bought without approval can't be sold, and returning a wholesale order is slow and costly. Approval is often the most valuable thing a wholesale buyer knows that no price list says.
How gating works
- Gated brands: the brand owner, or Amazon, limits who can sell. You apply in Seller Central, usually with invoices from an authorized distributor.
- Gated categories: some categories need approval for every seller, such as some grocery, beauty and health products.
- Approval is per seller account. Two sellers can get different answers for the same brand, and an approval can be taken away.
Seller Sync can't see your Seller Central account, so neither Results nor the PO Assistant knows which brands you're approved for. A read and its suggested quantity say nothing about whether you can sell the brand: that check is yours.
Check before you order
- Before a product goes in your order, search its listing under Add a Product in Seller Central. If it says you need to apply to sell, you aren't approved yet.
- Ask, on any product's rail, can list the brands in your order with each one's products and profit, so you check the brands with the most money first.
- If you aren't approved for a brand, take its products out of the order before it goes to the supplier. It's cheaper to leave a good product behind than to hold a case you can't list.
Brands you're not approved for
Keep your own list of the brands you've checked and can't sell yet, and look at it on every order from a supplier that carries them. Take a brand off when its approval comes through. Keep a second list for brands you choose not to buy for any reason, approved or not, such as brands that police their sellers hard. Both belong on your never-buy list; see Hazmat, meltables and oversize.
Before you apply
- Check the brand's price history on the side rail's chart first: approval is worth the effort only for brands with steady prices and room for another seller. The PO Assistant's Usual range band and its Sellers piling in mark show both.
- Ask your supplier whether they are an authorized distributor and can give you an invoice Amazon accepts.
- Some brands file complaints against sellers they haven't authorized. If you know a brand does, keep it off your orders whatever its numbers.
A worked example
A candy catalog has 6 products from Sour Punch that look worth buying. Reads on them suggest 2 to 4 cases of each, about $2,100 of profit together on the rail's numbers. Before ordering, you search one of them in Seller Central and it asks you to apply to sell, so you aren't approved.
You take the six out of your order, send the rest to your supplier, and apply that day with the distributor's invoice. Two weeks later your approval comes through. Prices and sellers move in two weeks, so you open the catalog's Results again, check each chart, and add the products that still clear your minimums to your next order.