Amazon Transparency Program: Another Weapon in the Fight Against Counterfeits
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “counterfeiter”? I’ll bet that a worker putting together kitchen cabinets is not the first thing you think of.
All kidding aside, a significant jump in eCommerce popularity led to a surge of fake products on the big marketplaces. This is an especially pressing question if you sell your products on Amazon.
Why are there so many fake products on Amazon?
Like any marketplace, Amazon puts expansion and profit at the forefront, allowing everyone, from single third-party sellers to well-known brands, to sell their products on its site. The tricky thing is that Amazon Terms of Service (TOS) prevent online sellers from duplicating listings for the same ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which makes them sell under the existing Amazon listing.
Sadly, along with the upstanding online merchants who legally resell products, a few third-party sellers hijack branded goods to sell non-authentic, cheap lookalikes under the same listings.
While you strain every nerve to build a reputable brand, improve your seller rating, and hit the top spot in the Amazon search results, counterfeiters are equally persistent in cashing in on your trademark.
With a slew of ever-emerging black-hat selling schemes, Amazon brand owners should take meaningful steps to eradicate counterfeit products before they can seriously hurt their brand’s credibility.
Although there is no cookie-cutter method to drive knockoffs from the marketplace, Amazon offers a range of anti-counterfeiting solutions under the Amazon Brand Registry umbrella to ensure that only authentic units are shipped to the customers. This is where the Amazon Transparency program plays the leading part.
In this article, we cover what the Amazon Transparency Program is, drilling into its eligibility requirements, highlighting the benefits, and touching upon its new Customer Engagement feature recently launched for the Amazon Transparency app.
Let me fill you in, one step at a time.
What is the Amazon Transparency Program?
Amazon describes its Transparency program as a product serialization service that is used to verify the authenticity of products before they are shipped to customers.
In a few words, this program is designed to reduce the number of potential counterfeits and thus decrease the likelihood of a buyer receiving a knockoff of the original product.
Since it was introduced in 2017, Amazon’s Transparency program has seen significant growth in publicity and an enrollment drive. As of now, the Amazon Transparency program is available for brand owners in the United States, Germany, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Spain, and Italy.
How Does Amazon Transparency Work?
The Transparency Program uses a special product labeling system, providing the registered brand owners with a series of unique transparency codes.
Side note:
The Transparency code does not replace the Universal Product Code (UPC). Unlike Global Trade Items (GTINs), which are specific to a particular type of product on the market, the Transparency code is unique to each individual item.
For example, if you’re selling ten units of your transparency-enabled product, you will have ten unique Transparency Codes but only one UPC.
When Transparency is implemented, unique barcodes are attached to the product’s packaging, and then scanned by Amazon at the stage of shipping for their authenticity. Thus, Amazon will check Transparency-enabled products, mark those that don’t have the transparency code as potential counterfeit items, and stop the delivery for investigation.
