Question
I received the email below from Amazon today. Can you tell me what it means?
February 1, 2014 Letter from Amazon
Hello from Amazon Services,
Thank you for selling on Amazon.com. Your success is important to us, and we are working continuously to identify opportunities to improve your selling experience and our customers' buying experience.
Our research shows that duplicate listings caused by missing or invalid UPCs make it more difficult for customers to find, evaluate, and purchase products. To improve the customer experience, we will begin requiring valid UPCs, regardless of any previous exemptions, for new and existing listings for designated brands in Hardlines, Softlines, and Consumables. As of February 19, 2014, sellers will experience the following changes on Amazon.com for designated brands only:
- New listing submissions (for designated brands) will always require a valid UPC in order to create an ASIN or to match to an existing ASIN. Submissions without a valid UPC (missing UPC or invalid UPC) will be rejected and the seller will receive a listing error.
- Existing ASINs (for designated brands)that are missing UPCs or have invalid UPCs will be suppressed from search and browse. Sellers will have to provide a valid UPC in order for the listing to reappear. Suppressed ASINs will be visible in both the Fix Suppressed Listing filter on the Manage Your Inventory tab and the Listing Quality and Suppressed Listing report in Seller Central. To learn more about how to fix suppressed listings, search for Suppressed Listings in Help on Seller Central.
To determine if a brand you sell is impacted, review the list of designated brands: http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/rainier/List_of_Designated_brands_final._V362073574_.pdf.
Thank you for your efforts to improve the customer experience on Amazon.com.
Regards,
Amazon Services
Answer
Basically, Amazon is saying as of February 19, 2014 you MUST have UPC codes for some designated brands.
All UPC codes must be entered in your POS system directly, which will then come over to Store Manager. Store Manager will then send your products with these UPC codes to Amazon. You will want to check with your POS company to verify you understand how to enter UPC codes into their system. As a backup, Store Manager also has a report showing you which products have valid UPC codes. You can view this report by going to Products > Reports > Product UPCs in Store Manager.
You may also want to read the following Help pages:
Please let me know if there's anything else we can do for you. Thank you.