The more third-party Amazon sellers you have, the less control you have, and the smaller your sales will be. Here’s why:
If you have ten third-party sellers on a particular Amazon listing, the sales distribution will unsurprisingly look like this.
This competition will inevitably lead to:
- No listing optimization: since each seller only gets a small piece of the pie, they’re not motivated to make the necessary enhancements to the listing page. And when your page content suffers, so does your qualified traffic, page rank, and thus sales.
- No consolidated promotions: having ten different sellers guarantees there won’t be a coordinated marketing approach around Prime Day, Cyber Monday, Mother’s Day, or other key dates important to your brand. It leaves you with no control, and a “fingers crossed” strategy instead of a concerted marketing approach.
- A price “race to the bottom:” competition among sellers for Amazon’s Buy Box will lead to MAP violations and swiftly diminishing margins.
- Fewer sellers yield increased advertising spend. Sellers with more skin in the game will be much more inclined to use paid media to promote your products, instead of ten different sellers adopting a “you got it” approach.
- Unpredictable customer service: ten different sellers with provide ten different approaches to customer service, no doubt.
In conclusion
The fewer sellers you have on Amazon, the more control you will have. It is beneficial to work with one third-party seller, and after they have proved themselves a trusted partner, grant them exclusivity to your listing(s). Then, you can work with them to remove all unauthorized sellers and regain control.
About Rainforest Brand Solutions
After ten years of advertising for brands like Toyota, the GRAMMYs, and Honda, Tyler Schell founded Rainforest Brand Solutions as a no-cost digital marketing solution for e-Commerce brands.
Instead of charging fees or retainers, we make our income by placing wholesale orders with you and reselling them online.