There are still 3 days before Black Friday, when sellers are working hard to prepare for the war, Amazon's notification email "is about to stop the accelerator program for third-party sellers and retail suppliers" caused an uproar, which involves all of the seller's sales and development A selection of authorized brand items.

In the email, Amazon stated that from December 1, 2022, Amazon will stop charging project fees for the accelerator program, and until March 31, 2023, merchants can continue to enjoy the project rights of the accelerator project.

After March 31, 2023, the accelerator program, including its corresponding project rights, will be completely terminated. In addition, after the merchant withdraws from the accelerator program, it can still continue to sell the brand and selection of the original accelerator program, which will not affect the normal use of seller accounts outside the accelerator program.

0 1Amazon cancels third-party brand authorization

As for the authorized brand project, Amazon stated that for the existing inventory of third-party authorized brand products, sellers can continue to sell normally until March 31, 2023. Amazon FBA warehouses will continue to receive inbound shipments created by sellers before December 1, 2022, after which they will stop charging project fees for third-party authorized brand projects. After March 31, 2023, Amazon will terminate the third-party authorized brand project, including its operation and project rights.

In other words, sellers who have obtained Amazon brand authorization will soon face the dilemma of not being able to sell on the Amazon platform.

It is reported that sellers participating in the authorized brand project on Amazon’s US, European, and Japanese sites have all received notification emails from Amazon.

0 2 What is the Brand Accelerator Program?

The Brand Accelerator Program is jointly launched by Amazon Global Store and Amazon's own brand team. Its goal is to formulate strategies for sellers, especially brands and manufacturers, so as to help members with advantages in the supply chain quickly increase sales and brand influence . Sellers enrolled in the program can use Amazon's brand for promotion, and sellers can promote their own brand directly below their competitors' listings.

The authorized brand project is that Amazon authorizes the official brand to the seller, the seller supplies and operates, and the Amazon brand team is responsible for promotion. The threshold for this project is not low. Amazon will require factory inspections, as well as sellers’ social responsibility reports and factory quality verification.

0 3Seller rights protection: Our today may be your tomorrow!

Amazon suddenly announced the cancellation of the brand accelerator program, which made the sellers who participated in the project miserable and said "too bad". Some sellers directly posted on the Zhiwubuyan community, expressing their own experiences:

Source: Zhiwubushu Community

And put forward the following 9 demands:

1. The money from VINE must be returned.

2. Guarantee the stability of FFOB, TR and other resources, and at the same time vine, top deal free and qualified. (If there is no FFOB advertisement, let alone clearing the goods in 4 months, it will not be cleared in 40 months, because authorized stores cannot advertise)

3. Extend the sales period of store brand products to the end of 2023, because we are selling, in warehouses at home and abroad, there are a lot of goods in transportation, production, and procurement, and just a few months is not enough!

4. Extend the creation time of FBA shipments, and you can create shipments into the warehouse at any time before exiting.

5. Open the authorized store advertising authority, and the seller can choose the traffic promotion method by himself, and cancel the commission at the same time!

6. Compensation for the loss of the factory audit. For the factory audit, the factory has spent a lot of money on rectification. Even if the audit fee is paid by Amazon, huge resources have been invested in the early stage, including manpower, material resources, money, time, etc.

7. Provide the necessary manager human and material resource docking service before the end of the project.

8. Since Amazon unilaterally proposed to terminate the contract, as compensation, the project fees collected in the past 2-3 years will be refunded to the seller

9. Allow us to re-register the seller's own brand, and the current link will be converted to our own brand to continue selling; (excerpt)

0 4 The scope is wide, and the seller's products are facing slow sales

At the same time, Hugo cross-border also released articles to speak out for relevant sellers.

"According to the feedback from dozens of affected Amazon sellers, the amount involved ranges from tens of thousands to tens of millions of yuan. But for just these dozens of sellers, the affected amount has reached hundreds of millions of yuan , and the range of categories involved is relatively wide. , involving bedding, women's wallets, clothing, sports outdoors, socks, home furnishing, PC accessories, bathroom, bags, sockets, 3C, jewelry, pet products, bottle openers, water cups, hardware, home textiles. Among them, 3C, home furnishing, Sports and outdoors, clothing, and pet supplies categories involve the most sellers."

Source: Hugo Cross Border

0 5 Opinions from all walks of life:

Li Pengbo, the former partner of Tongtuo Technology, believes that to some extent, Amazon’s cancellation of the authorized brand project is also beneficial to the cross-border industry, which helps to maintain the fairness of the Amazon platform. As early as 2019, when Amazon launched brand authorization, Amazon began to vigorously strengthen its brand effect, with many advertising spaces and traffic tilting actions. This time, the cancellation of authorized brands means that Amazon is shrinking its own brands. In fact, Amazon started to take the road of its own brand earlier, and there has been news that it is related to the US antitrust investigation, and the quality of brand products has been questioned.

Zhu Qiucheng, a financial writer, believes that from the recent layoffs, it is not difficult to find that Amazon itself is facing a lot of pressure and difficulties overseas this year. However, this time Amazon canceled the authorized brand project, some Chinese sellers could not continue to sell, which had a relatively large impact on the next development, and the trust of Chinese sellers in Amazon would be somewhat affected. He appealed that the majority of cross-border sellers should regard their own brands as the core of cross-border overseas sales. At the same time, the platform side also needs to negotiate and communicate with sellers, and go two-way to build a better business environment.

0 6 Seller's view:

At present, Amazon has not issued a further statement on the matter, but it is predictable that for sellers involved in the brand licensing program, this Black Friday is really dark.