Identifying Amazon Gated and Restricted Brands to Avoid Suspension

Amazon are gating and restricting more brands and categories. Sellers need to be aware of this to avoid legal issues which can lead to your Amazon Seller Account being suspended. There are different types of gating and restrictions on Amazon. There are gated categories, gated brands and restricted or high-risk products.

This is what we will be covering in our Gated Brands guide;

• Amazon Gated Categories
• Amazon Gated Brands
• Amazon Restricted and High-Risk Brands
• How to Identify Restricted and High-Risk Brands
• Tools to Protect Your Amazon Seller Account from Suspension
• Summary

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✅ IP RADAR: Checks for the likelihood of a product causing an Intellectual Property violation on your Amazon account.

✅ ELIGIBILITY CHECKER: Tells you if YOU can sell the product on your account at a glance!

✅ AUTO-UNGATING: Want to get ungated? BuyBotPro will apply for auto-ungatings for you and display the result in just SECONDS!

✅ PRIVATE LABEL ALERT: These are often the highest risk brands and you can be alerted to the ones to avoid.

Amazon Gated Categories

With certain categories, you need permission from Amazon to list your products. These include Jewelry, Dietary Supplements, Grocery and Watches. Some categories are easier than others to get permission for. Generally, Amazon will require invoices from authorised suppliers demonstrating the purchase of a minimum number of units to get ungated.

Categories and products requiring approval

• Collectible Coins
• Personal Safety and Household products
• Fine Art
• Holiday Selling Requirements in Toys & Games
• Jewelry
• Join Amazon Subscription Boxes
• Made in Italy
• Music & DVD
• Requirements for selling Automotive & Powersports products
• Services
• Sports Collectibles
• Streaming Media Players
• Video, DVD, & Blu-ray
• Watches

Top Tip: There are companies that can assist you with getting ungated such as BuyBotPro.

Amazon Gated Brands

Larger brands are increasingly getting their products Gated to protect against counterfeits and devaluing of their brand. To get ungated it is a similar process to category ungating. You will need to either provide invoices showing the purchase of a minimum number of units or have written permission from the brand owner. Getting written permission, or any reply at all, from the larger brands like Nike or Apple, is virtually impossible.

Some brands are only gated in certain countries, for example, you may be able to sell in the UK but not in Italy. The most important thing is to be ungated in the country you send your inventory to. With some brands, you may be restricted from selling specific products or a range of their products, so for example with Canon you may be able to sell their printers but not their cameras.

Here is an example of the requirements to get ungated for a brand;

Submit the required documents
3 different purchase invoices for ‘product X’ products from a manufacturer or distributor
Make sure your invoices:
• Are dated on or after 24-Jan-2020 (within 180 days)
• Include your name and address
• Include the name and address of the manufacturer or distributor
• Show the purchase of at least 30 units across all invoices
• Show the purchase of at least five different products of ‘product X’ across all invoices
• Hide pricing information (optional)

Top Tip – To check if a product is Gated or in a Gated category use the Amazon Seller App or try to ‘Add Product’ in your Seller Account.

Amazon Restricted and High-Risk Brands

This is where Amazon sellers often get caught out and suddenly find their account permanently suspended. There are brands on Amazon that are not yet Gated but the brand owners will still take action to stop people reselling them. Amazon will allow you to list the product but this could then result in an email saying you have been suspended due to Intellectual Copyright Infringement.

Some smaller or private label Amazon sellers may not yet have the relationship with Amazon to get your account suspended. Instead, they will email you directly to ask you to remove the products and threaten you with legal action if you do not comply. You can normally ignore these emails but we recommend you stop listing the brand immediately. If they get the brand gated or develop their relationship with Amazon they can then take more aggressive and damaging action. Even if they cannot get you suspended they still have the option of taking direct legal action.

These brand owners have shown a willingness to actively protect their brand on Amazon so it is better to switch your focus to lower risk products. Once your account is suspended it can be extremely difficult and expensive to get reinstated. If you are a new seller with no track record Amazon might suspend you permanently. It is virtually impossible to set up another account so you are effectively killing off any future Amazon business.

How to Identify Restricted and High-Risk Brands

We have tried to include all the brands we are aware of on our Restricted Brand List. You can get the full list of over 700 restricted brands emailed to you in a spreadsheet.

When searching for products to sell on Amazon it is helpful to be armed with the basic strategies for identifying high-risk brands. You can then make an informed decision on whether the product is likely to get your account closed.

⛔ There are some categories that certainly carry a higher risk than others. For example, Sports and Outdoors, Baby, Jewellery, Watches, Grocery and Health and Beauty all now mostly contain products you cannot safely buy and resell.

⛔ You also need to look out for Private Label sellers who will protect their brand and listings. You can normally spot these because there is usually only one seller on the listing. If it is a brand you have never heard of which is not commonly found in retail stores then this is a warning sign it is a Private Label.

⛔ Sometimes the seller will have various private label brands under their company name. If you look at the seller’s store you can normally see that they have one or more brands and they are normally the only seller on these listings. This is a clear warning sign. Increasingly Chinese manufacturers are selling their own branded products directly on Amazon. If the seller is a Chinese based manufacturer this is likely to be a product you need to avoid.

⛔ When looking at the Amazon listing watch out for the Copyright or TM symbols in the title. Another warning sign is if there is a popular product with just a few sellers who are all established registered companies. The brand has probably taken action to clear all the smaller unauthorised sellers from the listing.

Tools to Protect Your Amazon Seller Account from Suspension

We recommend BuyBotPro to help protect your account from Amazon intellectual property violations and suspensions. BuyBotPro has many features that help protect your account as well as being awesome for arbitrage sourcing.

✅ IP RADAR: Checks for the likelihood of a product causing an Intellectual Property violation on your Amazon account.

✅ ELIGIBILITY CHECKER: Tells you if YOU can sell the product on your account at a glance!

✅ AUTO-UNGATING: Want to get ungated? BuyBotPro will apply for auto-ungatings for you and display the result in just SECONDS!

✅ PRIVATE LABEL ALERT: These are often the highest risk brands and you can be alerted to the ones to avoid.

Summary

As you can see there are a lot of potential dangers. If you look carefully at the products you are planning to buy or list you can normally tell if there is likely to be a problem. We do also have a live list of brands we currently know to avoid. If you know any brands that are not on the list please let us know immediately so they can be added.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you have any thoughts or advice please let people know in the comments below.

You are also very welcome to join our Facebook Groups where we discuss issues like this;

Amazon Selling for Beginners – for those starting on their Amazon selling journey.

Amazon FBA Masters – for the more experienced sellers and those looking at starting in Private Label selling.

If you want to be kept informed of restricted brands then please sign up to our mailing list below for updates and other great free advice and information.

Useful Resources

Categories and Products Requiring Approval for Amazon.com

Current list of Amazon Gated and Restricted Brands

Good luck and Happy Selling!

James 🙂