Selling on Amazon is mostly a breeze. Yes, you have frequent hurdles to jump over when Amazon puts new ones in your way, which happens more than sellers would like. Otherwise, managing day to day Amazon life is simple. But what happens when another company starts selling your own product and you lose the Buy Box? Here are a few ideas on how you can reclaim the Buy Box from resellers on Amazon.

How can you tell if a reseller is costing you sales on Amazon?

1. Keep a close eye on your Buy Box winning percentage. It’s at the very top of your dashboard when you log in to Seller Central, so it’s hard to miss. It’s the box labeled “Buy Box Wins”:

If you see your percentage dropping, and your sales are dropping, this is a major red flag.

Side note: It’s not always something to be concerned by if your Buy Box percentage is dropping. There are multiple reasons why that can happen that won’t affect your performance.

2. Check out your product page. On the right hand side of the page you’ll see the price, delivery times and the Add to Basket button. Just below that you’ll see: “Dispatched from and sold by {company name}”. If that company name isn’t yours, you’ve got yourself a reseller.

How can you stop resellers taking the Buy Box from you?

The TLDR answers:

1. Cut off their supply chain
2. Undercut their prices
3. Write into your contracts that they can’t sell on Amazon
4. Send a Cease and Desist letter if they’re unauthorised sellers
5. Out-perform the reseller so they’re less likely to win the Buy Box

1. Cut off their supply chain

Of course there are benefits to working with resellers, particularly around volume. The challenge is margin. Resellers, you would hope, drive more volume than through your own channels, and hopefully they’re selling the majority offline. If they’re selling high volumes online, they’re probably just competing with you. Check their sales volumes by channel. If Amazon is driving a large portion of their sales, then you’re essentially wasting profit – You could be the main seller on Amazon, take all of those sales (and more if you work Amazon well) and give your margins a large increase. 

If after looking at the numbers and your relationship you feel you would benefit from being the sole seller, cut off their supply chain. This is often a reseller of a reseller, so you may need to do some detective work to find out how the end-reseller is getting the product.

2. Undercut their prices

This is easy to put into effect, but you’d be committing to a long term RRP reduction. To do this, simply look at the price the reseller is selling at including P&P, and change your listing in Seller Central to be slightly less. You may be successful in winning the Buy Box with just a 1p price reduction, but check the product page to see who’s winning after you’ve changed your price. It will take up to 15 minutes to see the effect.

3. Write into your contracts that they can’t sell on Amazon (or that they can’t undercut prices)

Ideally you’d be able to do this in advance of starting work with the resellers, but you can do this retrospectively, by updating their contract at the end of a term, or on agreement with the reseller that you’re changing the terms. The alternative to stop resellers taking the Buy Box is to write into the contract that they can’t undercut you on prices. You legally can’t force RRPs, but seek legal advise to find out how you can prevent undercuts.

4. Send a Cease and Desist letter if they’re unauthorised sellers

Unauthorised sellers are often the easiest to get out of your way. They typically use drop-shipping techniques to get hold of your products, supplied by authorised resellers. To get these unauthorised sellers out of your way, post them a Cease and Desist letter (loads of great templates online if you don’t want to hassle your solicitor) to force them to stop selling on Amazon. You can find their contact details by clicking their company name in the blue link on the right hand side of the product page.

5. Out-perform the reseller so they’re less likely to win the Buy Box

There are a number of factors that impact your ability to win the Buy Box – Such as sales volume, seller rating, response times etc. Check out your Pricing Dashboard to drill down into the metrics of why you may not be winning.

Digital Peanut can of course support in all of these areas (and more). If in doubt, get in touch and we’ll do what we can to help.