Brand eyes distributors [New Research]

Last updated : Aug 6, 2022

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the content when it is linked to the product

Thanks for your comment Cecil Minniear, have a nice day.
- Cathy Gambrell, Staff Member

should i work with brands or distributors when building my amazon fba business this is a question i get asked all the time that i'm going to tackle today and i'm going to be giving the pros and cons of each because the answer is not as clear-cut as you may think plus if you stick around i have something that's free for you guys at the end of the video that i think you're really going to like let's get into it hey everyone my name is chris and welcome to today's video i am a seven figure amazon seller and before we get into the topic of today if you have not checked out my ebook yet i highly recommend doing that you can buy a physical copy but the ebook is completely free and you can also sign up for a waitlist for my new book that comes out it will be downloadable as well plus physical copy how to create an amazon fba wholesale business from zero to seven figures from scratch that will be available on my website alright so let's get into it this may not be as clear cut of an answer as you may think but i do want to go over the pros and cons of each and that may give you a better picture of what you're working with when you are making those cold calls whether or email reach outs so the way it works is is this is there are brands and there are distributors and oftentimes is that when you're dealing with bigger brands right when it comes to you know nintendo sony samsung coleman stuff like that these big brands it's going to be very very hard for someone our size your size or even you know an eight figure amazon seller year it's going to be really hard to work with them direct so that's where distributors come in so what happens is is that these big brands will sell to these distributors because it doesn't make sense really for them to sell the end user it's just not in nintendo's business model to list every single nintendo product on amazon now does nintendo still sell products on amazon i believe they do and a lot of these other big brands do as well but it doesn't make sense to funnel their entire pipeline through amazon to the end user so what happens is that it makes sense for them to sell in bulk to these distributors that will you know there isn't an incentive for them to take that big lump sum of money because you can do things with money and then from there those distributors will take that pie and break it up in to smaller sellers such as me and you and then you'll have brands when you work directly with brands most of the time it's smaller brands it's brands that not everyone probably has heard of this is not the way it works every single time i'm speaking in general terms here but i will get into the pros and cons of each and i wanted you to know of the logistics before i do so i'm gonna go ahead and start with the cons of working directly with brands okay so first off if you're working directly with a brand right because they are smaller it may make sense for them to sell more to the end user meaning that a lot of these smaller brands are selling on amazon themselves and unlike the bigger brands what's happening here is is that it may mean that it's you're going to have to use more of a sales tactic to get in with them if they're already selling on amazon themselves why do they need to sell to you what problem for them are you solving well this is where you can kind of come at them with a sales tactic right you can say you know you can upsell them with some ppc advertising if you're good at that maybe enhanced photography maybe you offer to pay more for some of their products than they would normally sell them for i don't know but that's one of the reasons why we don't really work with many brands and i'll get to our setup at the end but then a pro is is fewer competition so if you can get in with a brand sign an exclusive deal or maybe just get in on a listing where they let you sell you're going to be dealing with fewer competition once you actually get past that barrier to entry because not everyone's going to have that skill set that you have whether it's ppc tweaking or you know whatever it is that you're doing for them or offering them to where they want to sell to you maybe you have a good personality i don't know that is definitely a pro one more con when it comes to sewing with brands is is that simply speaking there's usually just less volume now this is not the case across the board but odds are the bigger brands are going to have more traffic and be doing more sales velocity some of these other brands right like a nintendo switch is going to be moving you know tens of thousands of units per month whereas maybe a third party console that's not as well known is moving hundreds now this is a very broad term and it's not the case across the board but i would say generally speaking in my experience in my markets the ideal and it is the last pro with dealing with brands is there are less kinks in the supply chain so sometimes those brands can manufacture and if you're working directly with them you can say hey i want 700 of this and they may not even have it on hand but all they have to do is manufacture it and it can give you kind of an edge on the supply chain one less middleman to deal with which doesn't always mean better pricing and that's why i didn't put that as a pro because and i'll get to that in the distributor section so let's go ahead and talk about distributors and i want to talk about some of the pros first and one of the pros right out of the gate is they may be able to sell you more brands so what i mean by this is is that let's say i want a coleman sleeping bag but instead of going directly to coleman i go to a distributor well that distributor probably is selling more than coleman they're probably selling a handful of brands if not you know tens to possibly hundreds of brands and this is great because it's going to give you more products to buy and i cannot tell you how many times we have reached out to distributors and wanting a particular brands and then we find out that they either one they don't have the brand we wanted or two the brand we wanted just isn't profitable but yet they have all of these other brands and so that can be very beneficial a con though when dealing with distributors is is that they may not be direct in terms of amazon's eyes now let me explain and what does this even mean so when you're dealing with brands on amazon there's direct and there's not direct and when a brand is direct what that does is it passes the warranty from the seller to that other seller that's selling the items as well as you know a bunch of other logistics now what and it also can mean problems with ungating too if let's say you have a distributor right and they say okay yeah we're direct and you get their invoice because you have to submit it because you're gated in this brand odds are if you were direct with the brand that invoice would have a much higher rate of working granted we have great success rate with our invoices working to get ungated now just because you get ungated doesn't mean amazon may ask for authenticity and that distributor may be direct but then amazon may question your authenti

Thanks Martin your participation is very much appreciated
- Cathy Gambrell

About the author

Cathy Gambrell

I've studied reference desk at Waynesburg University in Waynesburg and I am an expert in spirituality. I usually feel angry. My previous job was solar energy systems designer I held this position for 29 years, I love talking about watching documentaries and oragami. Huge fan of Hailey Bieber I practice cross-country skiing and collect cereal box prizes.