Why Brand Protection is a MUST for Amazon Sellers

In this podcast, Emmanuel Frost and Kyle Balcerak from Brand Alignment discuss the importance of protecting brands on Amazon with Adam Shaffer, Phelps United President. While Amazon presents a huge opportunity for brands, it is not without risk; it is complicated and ever-changing. Brand Alignment is 100% focused on helping protect brands on Amazon and other marketplaces.

Learn more about Brand Protection here: https://phelpsunited.com/brand-protec...
Learn more about Brand Alignment here: https://www.brandalignment.com/

The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.

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To learn more about Phelps United, visit our website.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Planet Amazon Podcast with Adam Schaffer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace. Hello, my name's Adam Schaffer, and welcome to the Planet Amazon Podcast. As you could tell from the name, the Planet Amazon podcast is about all things Amazon and helping brands successfully navigate the 600 billion plus Amazon marketplace. On the show, we talk to both experts and the actual brands selling on Amazon to address important topics that can hopefully help others on their Amazon journey. While Amazon presents a huge opportunity for most, it is not without risk. It's complicated and it's ever changing, but we are here to help. One common issue that I find that resonates with most brands we talk to is the concept of brand protection. What is brand protection and how do you actually protect your brand on Amazon? Well, joining us today on the podcast to help answer that question are Emmanuel Frost and Kyle Balak from Brand Alignment. Now, these guys are 100% focused on helping protect brands on Amazon and other marketplaces. We work closely with them and get to see them in action. Please welcome to the show Emmanuel Frost and Kyle bk. Hey, thanks. Hello guys. Hello. Thanks for joining us today. Great to see you. You as well. Have a beer here. You guys seem like you're ready to talk about brand protection. I mean, this is like one of the biggest topics. We, we, you know, we talk about, you know, a together, you and I, uh, but every single brand we talk to has some type of issue with regard to protecting their brand on Amazon. And brand protection means different things to different people. Why don't you tell us what you think the world of brand protection is and means, and, you know, the different types of brand protection that you try to help these brands with? Yeah. Um, well, I'll take, uh, my first whack at that. Adam, it's great to, uh, great to be on. Thanks for having us. Um, you know, it's great working with our, you know, partners that, you know, take good care of us. Um, you know, your question's a little loaded. Um, there's a lot of different, uh, lot brand protection means a lot of different things, a lot of different types of brands. You know, we work with, uh, enterprise brands, small, medium, large consumer brands, um, and, you know, smaller brands just starting out brands, you know, everyone has a different focus what, what they think, um, is going on, um, or what their immediate problem is. Um, we tend to hear a lot of, you know, someone's selling my products that I don't want them selling it, or who is this person? Um, you know, that's, it's a common, uh, initial, um, you know, thing that we'll get, uh, initial problem we'll get. But usually the problems that we see tend to go a lot deeper, you know, and, and requires a little bit more working from a consulting side and, and, and services side. Great. And, and, but, but let's get, you know, down to it. I mean, I think that's a pretty core answer, but for me, you know, helping brands and working with brands, the number one thing we all hate together is brands that are selling our products. And they shouldn't be. They're unauthorized sellers. They're sitting there, uh, on Amazon, maybe there's 5, 10, 15, 20 different sellers trying to sell the same product and at the same time, destroying the street price. Bringing that minimum advertised price down to like low, low, low and really hurting their, their channel integrity Is is that something that you guys are seeing and deal with on a regular basis? Yeah, so, um, it's, it's just commerce. At the end of the day, if I can get a product cheaper than what everyone else is selling it at, and I can get that product any which way I can, I'm gonna do it. Especially cuz it's not illegal, it's gray market. It's, it's sort of gray area. It's not counterfeits, it's not, it's not even knockoffs. It's the actual authentic product that they're selling. So if, if the map price is $50 for a product and I'm able to get this product, let's say overseas for 15 bucks and I can bring it to the US and then after FBA fees, after shipping, after logistics, after everything, I can sell it for $35 and I could win that buy box from Amazon. Why wouldn't I do that? Especially if I have purchasing power, I can make a million dollar PO and I can turn that into 1.5 million and then I can take that extra money I made and do it again and make an even larger po It, it, it makes sense. So we're more or less fighting economics because it's not illegal. So it, it opens up this interesting avenue where brand protection is almost something that brands now need to consider to sort of tighten up their processes in ways that maybe they didn't think about before as sort of technology grows. And after Covid more and more sales is going to Amazon and, and things like that, they almost need to tighten up their supply chain on every level to prevent all these little leaks that sort of attract people looking for ways to make money legally, although ethically gray, um, it, it just, it opens up new doors into what brands need to think about moving forward. Okay. Okay. So staying with that, you know, let's talk about you, you know, and I, I know a bunch, I don't want to say all their, all the brand names who protect the innocent a little bit, but, you know, a brand comes to us and we work with you guys and they are selling on Amazon. Maybe they're selling directly to Amazon, maybe they're selling to Amazon and to us as an exclusive three p for them. But their biggest issue is they are struggling with their channel because the minimum advertised price is being foiled by these, call it unauthorized sellers. So now income, you guys, brand alignment comes in and how do you actually start it up and what's your advice and how do you get the ball rolling with these guys? Well, you know, it really depends on the brand, right? Um, everyone has different expectations when it comes to enforcing map, but you know, to your point, everyone does come first with how do we remove the unauthorized sellers so we can get to map because there's always that, but, or that, so, um, we need to get the unauthorized guys off. And that was then, you know, that goes to manual's point previously, you know, once we kind of get in there, um, you know, we, you know, we start with the unauthorized guys and we'll start with sending messages, you know, letting the whole channel know that, hey, you know, we are, not only are we monitoring map now, but you know, we're on and we're looking. And once we, once everyone knows that, you know, brand alignment's on the case and we're we're taking care of it, we're looking, you know, they know the brands are gonna know if they're not at, at Matt, and it's almost this, you know, big brother approach, unfortunately we have to take. But, um, it helps just sh the sharing of information helps everybody. What, what I found is that the brands that we work with need to participate. You know, they think it's like, Hey, we want brand protection, give us brand protection, get these guys off, but it's a two-way street. Is that right? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Um, you know, we can only, we're, we're a a member of the team, um, you know, we're, we're not out here performing this service on our own. I think that's important, um, to differentiate not only brand alignment, but what a successful brand protection program really looks like is we need organization buy-in, uh, one, um, and, you know, we can do a lot of the work, but we can't do all of the work. You know, we're not having the hard conversations with your vendors. Um, we're not having those conversations with distribution. We're advising the brand or the client in this case, you know, on what, you know, based on the data, what we're seeing these, this is what would solve your problem. And we take a, we try to take a very objective point of it. And, and that's really where Manuel, um, you know, my day-to-day is more effective communication, directing the overall program. But Emmanuel is really who is the one who rolls his sleeves up and gets in, in, in deep consulting and in problem solving with the brands, and then we build out services around those. Um, so, you know, I would, I would actually defer to him to kind of answer, you know, a little bit more on, on that. So Laka mentioned advisors, at the end of the day, we're just advisors. We're gonna give you all the information that we have so that the brand can make the best decision to help improve the problem. We can't, you know, we can't force anything and, and brands are very complex systems with a lot of different decision makers, and, you know, maybe what we present is a solution for this problem, but it might not be a solution for a larger problem that we're not involved in. So there's a lot of complex things going on. So at the end of the day, like Kyle said, we would need buy-in from the highest levels, um, so that conflicts of interest don't pop up, which sometimes happen, um, when you're talking about difficult supply chain decisions that need to be made, um, with certain suppliers or distributors that, um, might be diverting. Um, so, so at the, at the end of the day, all we can really do is advise and we can't do it all ourselves. We need the company to work with us and what works best for the company to solve the problem at hand. And, you know, that's, that's a great point. Um, but the data that you provide is unbelievable. I mean, the stuff that we see that we share with you guys, um, is great. And, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about what, what kind of data is available that you're able to share with the brands to try to help educate them on what's really going on on Amazon and in their channel? Yeah, yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. We get a little bit involved here. Um, we forget about the backend systems that we've built over the years and, you know, continue to use to maintain our solution. So, you know, brand alignment. You know, we've been, I think it's five and a half years of the idea, five years we're coming up on here. We've started as a map monitoring company, and then the need for unauthorized sellers has kind of grown and we've built our specialty around that. But the entire time we've self-sustained and built, um, a process, process and a suite of software that kind of allows the data to come to you. You know, whether that's reporting, you know, we're doing inventory buy box data, we're doing, uh, data una unauthorized sellers. How often they win that buy box, not only today, but over the last 30 days. How many times have they hit the buy box in the last, you know, say on a 12 hour basis for the last 30 days? There's a lot of data that focus on the buy box, but also focus on the unauthorized sellers. Who are they, what's their, you know, company name email. Th those things are pretty basic among providers, but we try to automate those things so that it becomes just the expectation. So the expectation is to log in and see all the stuff that, of course we need mape price monitoring, um, that's all just default for us. It just comes with the service, right? Um, you know, we started off only doing map monitoring, but nobody only needs map monitoring, or if you do only need mat monitoring, you have a really, really well put together supply chain and you've already been putting a lot of attention towards fixing the issue at hand. Um, so the map monitoring piece, you know, is a foundation cornerstone of our, of, of our service and always has been. But we're doing, um, you know, special API integrations with various, um, marketplaces, not just Amazon. We're doing advanced, um, business, Amazon business data, um, that, you know, is a, is burdensome to say the least. Um, you, you name it, we build a custom suite. So if we have, if a brand comes to us with a problem, we might not have it within three to four weeks, we're building that, not only that data system, but a then an enforcement system around it or a reporting system around it for the brand. Um, and so it, it, these things kind of just become reality as, as you kind of log into our system. Um, but it's really the consulting and the analysis and the helping you move forward as an organization and helping you solve these problems as a collective mind between not only us but all our partners that we work with, like you and all the brands that we work with. Um, you know, we don't, won't necessarily tell, uh, other brands intricate details, but, you know, we might know a path forward based on something else we've seen in, in, you know, another client. So the kind of the group mind think, um, that represents brand alignment. I mean, we've found unauthorized sellers and we, we know who they are, we know who they were, and we have a historical record of everyone that we've that database becomes very powerful. Um, so not even so, you know, it's, it just comes with the territory that, you know, the data that you get is going to be good and is very customizable to your needs as a brand. And to piggyback off, uh, to piggyback off of what colleges said, so we use data for monitoring. We have our internal databases. We use data in another manner for investigative purposes. So brands will come to us and they'll say, okay, we have a big problem. We, this seller is taking up an enormous amount of buy box, millions of dollars worth of inventory. We don't know where they're getting it from. Cuz these are global enterprises where, you know, maybe a million dollars in inventory could be coming from any continent or any location. So sometimes it's difficult to identify them because these sellers have a very large interest, not just for themselves, but for all their employees to keep the source of where they get their products as hidden as possible. That's their biggest secret because their source is not just worth the million dollars of inventory they have in possession. It's worth all the future purchases they can make. So if they make a million dollar order every quarter and this source lasts for years and you can continue to resell this product, that's, that the knowledge of where they get their product from could be worth tens of million dollars to these sellers and to the ecosystem sort of built around them. Um, there's, um, all sorts of wholesale distributors there. There's a whole ecosystem built on gray market. So they have some of the most cutting edge techniques to keep their identities hidden. Um, sort of, um, hiding company names. Very advanced stuff that I don't want to give too much detail into. And when people are going to that level that they're spending their entire day is thinking about how can I hide who I am sometimes one of the few things, some of the few tools and best tools that we have as data, cuz data sort of uncovers everything because while they're sitting around thinking about human details, they're not thinking about these sort of system details where they buy so much inventory that they naturally float to the top of all sales list. I ideas like this, I don't wanna get into too much detail, but sometimes you can't hide from the data no matter what you do. And then even if you try to hide from the data, there's still ways that AI will uncover things that the human mind can't cover up. So long term data is one of our best tools to figure out how this product is moving all over the world. Hey guys, that was awesome. So, you know, let's change the topic just a little bit because, you know, I run into these, um, unauthorized sellers and I always talk to the brands and say, look, if you could just stop selling them through your distributors because they're not adding any value, they're ghost posting your stuff, they're not investing in your inventory. We've purchased, you know, a hundred thousand, 500,000, a million dollars worth of your inventory. We're shipping it prime, we have it up at Amazon, and you got 20 or 30 other sellers just posting stuff from distribution and making a mockery of your, of your product. How do you deal with that? Like, what, what do you say to the brand to help them alleviate this problem? It's a tough, it's a toughie.<laugh>, come on. Um, no, I mean there's, there's different strategies, Adam, um, so ghost posters, right? These are the people that are, you know, posting but just drop shipping or don't have the product at all. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's the same, it comes down to the same, you know, essential thing that we do is we advise, right? So we'll come into you and say, Hey, you know, these people are likely getting it from distribution. We did a couple test buys. All the orders are coming from a distributor, you know, um, you need to have a discussion with your partner and, and put a policy in place that, you know, stops this kind of behavior because Amazon's not gonna stop it, right? We can't take the listing down from Amazon. Um, you know, that's not gonna benefit anybody. And, you know, there's, there's black hat tactics that, you know, have been tried again and again, but never proven to work take downs or, you know, you can't take down just people selling from a distributor. I mean, it's allowed on Amazon. So, you know, it comes the same, it comes down to the same thing that we do. We advise, we isolate. So we'll look at, you know, sell sale sale lists and we'll do our investigation. We'll tie it together. It really just comes down to our team managing the service for the brand. Um, hey, we've found these six guys, they can't purchase anymore. Okay, we go in there and we have a discussion and, and we get it done. I mean, yeah, the brand has to have the ability to do that type of thing. Um, you know, some smaller brands might not, or we have to get the distribution agreement read and negotiate it. So there's little tidbits, you know, there's always issues, but, um, overall it just comes down to another service that we can just audit and check and support the brand on as another member of the team. And, and once you guys get in involved with the brand and they're participating with you guys and taking your advice and, you know, talking to their distributors and putting maybe some harder policies in place, how successful had you been at being able to get, um, call it the, the bandits of the unauthorized guys off their listings? I mean, re pr I, I can't even think of an instance where we've failed. Um, that was anything other than, well, we we're not willing to go that far, right? Um, you know, you talked to the distributor and you know, if there's a problem, well it's, it's, the brand isn't able to say, Hey, stop selling my product. And they have the choice. Well, if you'd like to stop, then you're gonna have to make a choice as on who your distribution partner is. Um, you know, if they're not willing to afford you, um, select selective distribution, so we won't sell the parties who are hurting your brand and they're not willing to work with you that way, then we as brand alignment would say, well, it doesn't sound like you're working with the right distribution partner might, well wanna work with the partners that do afford you those options if they're having that kind of problem. And, and keep in mind, we don't, we don't start by, um, directly going to the distributor. We'll have cease and desist messaging. We'll, we will contact these sellers every last one of them to let them know that they're not authorized to sell on Amazon by the brand. And that removes a lot of these sellers. And some of them know that it's easy to find out who they are and they don't wanna risk the relationship with a large distributor and they're gonna remove themselves. So, um, there's gonna be a lot of sellers, even if you have a brand that maybe doesn't want to cut anybody off, which happens, or maybe they have a distributor who says, you know what, we're not gonna cut anybody off for you because you're a brand new brand, or you're too small. We still see effective removal rates just by our initial cease and desist process, electronic, physical, um, as long as, as well as other things that we can do. Um, sometimes just the fact that we've identified who they are through investigation, even though they're, they think they're hiding their identity and sending a letter to an address that they think that you're never gonna be able to find would be enough to spook them without having to go through distribution. So there are, I, I don't want brands to think that the only way this works is if your distributor plays along. We have many different techniques proven over the years and pretty much every industry that sells on e-commerce on Amazon, that we can get good removal rates through a reactive approach, which is enforcement and a proactive appro approach, which is through supply chain cutting, cutting people off preventative type, um, of work. Because in general, um, a phrase I like to use is if, if they already have the product in their hands, you're sort of at their will. All you could do is play the fear game with them, and sometimes it's gonna work. But if they say, you know what? I don't care. They hire an attorney who specializes in protecting them, all you can really do is let them sell out and focus on where that leak is coming from and, and plugging that up. But finding some of those guys, you said you were able to find 'em because like, like you said, uh, you know, we find that we can get the majority of the, you know, call it smaller players off, but there is these professional, uh, sellers on Amazon that, you know, have been around for a while and you know that they're hard to find. They have lots of different names, but you guys have been able to find these guys, and I think getting that letter to them in their hiding place is enough to wake them up, I think sometimes. And and that's what you're finding too? Yeah, it, it's, it's, it's like anything else is the 80 20, so 80% of the problem is gonna come from 20% of the sellers, and 80% of the sellers make up 20% of the problem. They only have a few units. So we, we tend to know who the biggest problems are just from the number of brands we work with. So say a brand comes to us, um, an apparel, there's certain players in that field that, I mean, I mean bad actors where we already know who they are and we know where they get their product from. We know which continent they get their product from. We know exactly which distributors they get their product from, and it's more or less just informing them, or we even find other distributors that they get their product from, which we weren't aware of previously. So that's where our database comes in, where we help, it's sort of like a shared, it's sort of like a knowledge base that we can then share with a new customer of ours to sort of welcome them to sort of brand protection and say, okay, these are the people that you should not be selling to under any circumstances. These are the people who you can sell to with extreme caution. And then these are green light. We've never had a problem with them and sort of putting systems into place, um, because there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of brands who are aware of these bad actors, but very few that know where the product is coming from, where we already have that information and we share that information with our clients and that any new brands that come in in that industry, we're gonna open up that knowledge base to them so that they can then make the right decisions to help fix the issue that they're dealing with. I mean, that, that's certainly sounds, uh, like a pretty good approach for sure. It's definitely helped us in the past. So, so just, um, changing it up a little bit here, you know, just to try and identify, you know, you guys taught me that there's not just one kind of violator, you know, you guys talk about like eight different types of violators. Like who, who are these? Try to classify 'em for us. Um, yeah, Kyle, you want me to take this? Yeah, no, well, we can, it, this is like kind of what the tool we use to categorize brands, right? So, um, there are eight, maybe more types of different violators we find out there. You got your, just your hustle culture, guys that are scrubbing through Amazon, bargain bins, arbitrage sellers, your, you know, I think we have in the list mom and pop shops, right? You know, they have decent, they have a decent, you know, little store and maybe they're not doing, maybe they're not doing the amount of volume that they say they're doing. Um, you got your huge, um, you know, sideways distributors, you got, there's all different types of people and, but really what we use that tool, have you seen on our website eight types of violators, is it's really what types of violators are you dealing with as a brand, and how does that help us kind of design the services that you need? So you come to us and it's like, okay, I'm having problems with, you know, bargain vin guys and you know, a couple here or there, onesie twosie sellers. Well, you know, I'm not gonna sit here inside and sell you the, the full package. Maybe you just need our messaging, right? Maybe it's not that big of a deal. And, you know, we don't need to analyze full in, you know, um, you know, your, all your data from top to bottom. Um, maybe it's just, you know, a lighter solution that'll get the job done. But if you come to us and you say, well, I'm having problems with, you know, we identify you're having problems with the seven out of the eight, well, you know, we're gonna have to put more services in play for, you know, if we have multiple services sometimes for each type of violator. So it's, it just, it really helps us customize a solution when we first meet a brand to just get the conversation started and, um, working on it. Um, you know, it, it ranges. Those are just the common types that we find. But then there's small segments, um, here and there, um, that are new, right? We're seeing this new kind of, uh, seller, which is the crowdsource, which we are, we, you know, may be updating that sheet it's, it's I think four years old. What, what's the crowd? What's the. Crowdsource? Well, that's just the newest, uh, type of violator where it's, uh, ordinary everyday people buying it and sending it to a fa uh, warehouse. And then the warehouse is the one selling it on Amazon. So, so the motive is credit card points. So they, they create these marketplaces where they say, okay, we have a warehouse in, in a state that has no state tax, like Delaware mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and they say, okay, here's a deal of a product that we want a popular electronics or, or whatever that's on a promo. Um, right now it's three three, let's say it's 3 99. It's, um, it's a good deal buy from this marketplace, um, that has quantity limits, so you can only buy two of them. Oh, I, I, I get as many, as many people as possible to buy it and send it to my warehouse. In exchange, I'm gonna give you your money back, sometimes even less. But, um, it helps you get a, a lot of credit card points or helps you achieve whatever, limit, whatever, you know, you need to spend$10,000 in three months. It helps you get your hotel points or whatever. So this is actually very popular. They can get hundreds and hundreds of people all over the country to buy thousands of units and ship it to their warehouse with margin spare. So they, they can, they can then turn around and sell it on Amazon or sell it internationally somewhere that, um, doesn't have those deals because of arbitrage. I get it. I get it. I didn't know that one. Thanks guys. That's. Uh, that's, it's growing. The. More, it's growing. It's crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing, arbitrage. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Wow. It's growing. Y. It's brilliant. Um, stay away from our stuff. Uh, awesome <laugh>. So, so, so what other types? We talked about the bomb and pop, and now there's crowdsourcing. What, what other types of violators? I mean, there's parallel importers. There's liquidation lots. People go on liquidation.com or B stock, and they'll buy gigantic pallets of returns or, or overstock from Walmart or Target, or Best Buy or Okay, Costco. And, um, they'll, they'll go through the product, they'll throw out anything that's not in good shape, or even if it is in bad shape, they'll just sell it as new. So it's used, sold as new, and you know, that's a bad customer experience for the brand. Um, so there's liquidation lot buyers, in which case brands need to see who's liquidating, what their distribution agreements look like, um, and go from there. There's ones and twosies where, you know, someone got a gift for Christmas, they don't want it anymore, so they sell it on Amazon. You get a few of those. Mom and pop shops are, say somebody in Kansas, they have a, a shoe store and maybe things aren't going so well on brick and mortar, so they decide to sell on Amazon, and they end up buying thousands of pairs of shoes that doesn't quite fit the bill of what you'd expect for one, um, retail storefront to have, um, in a certain zip code. Um, and you can catch 'em that way. Those are relatively easy, easier, less sophisticated type, um, um, schemes to investigate. You have parallel importers which hide their identity very well. There's groups, they talk, they once one learn something, they, they tell everybody else. They have, um, sort of news roundups that they send each other of, this is what's going on at Amazon. If your account has been suspended, these are tactics to get it unsubs suspended. If anyone comes after you for a false trademark violation, these are the attorneys to contact. Um, if there's any deals, they'll sort of, um, let everyone know, Hey, there, there's a deal going on on this website. Take advantage of it. Sometimes these are paid groups. Um, we know that there's secret websites out there that manage the flow of very large quantities of inventory. Um, so there's also this like creepy. Like the dark web or something. Sort of, it might be <laugh> sort of, yeah, this goes on, this goes on. Um, and there's money to be made, you know, this exists because they're making good money doing this. And it, it's, you know, like Kyle said, some of it is hustle culture. People just go into TJ Max or Marshalls and with a FOB scanner and just scanning the upc and they have some software that checks on Amazon to see if the margins make sense after FBA fees, you know, FBM or f b to see if they can make a profit on it. But that's very, like, that's very time consuming. But, but that is something that people do. Or they buy pallets and they make YouTube videos and or they sign up for an influencer who teaches 'em how to do it. Sometimes we get the same cease and desist message response from, from 15 different sellers just copied and pasted from some influencer who told them what to say. Um, so, so there's, there's a whole ecosystem out there. And, um, at the end of the day, this exists because all these methods exist and there's money to be made. So as you sort of close one avenue, they start brainstorming and thinking, Hey, okay, I can't buy more than two units from amazon.com. What can I do to get more product, as much product as possible? You know, okay, what if I get a lot of people to do it? Okay, but how can I motivate them? Ah, credit card points? And, and these ideas are sort of, um, invented. Um, it's a good method I think of is like in war offense and defense as defense gets better, offense has to improve, and as offense gets better, defense has to improve. So it's, it's, it's a constant kind of struggle. Um, so there's constantly new things being invented. Um, and then there's things such as stolen goods, the old mm-hmm.<affirmative> off the back of the truck that I see that still exists, burglaries from storefronts anywhere. Um, we, we tend to see this more in the West coast and California or Nevada. Um, there, there's many different methods. And, and, and based on our initial analysis of their, of, of their um, sort of e-commerce landscape, we can devise a strategy to say, okay, most of your pro problem, 80% of it is coming from parallel importers, or it's coming from arbitrage sellers, or it's, Hey, you have a buying group problem. And then we sort of craft a strategy around that mm-hmm. <affirmative>, instead of sort of aimlessly doing everything, we, we we're very targeted and we try to be very efficient and what we think is gonna work for that brand. And, you know, we, I work with Kyle very closely to sort of devise a strategy for that brand, um, that makes sense in, in timelines that make sense. And we do our best to communicate that to the brand. And, uh, okay. And what's your thoughts on brand registry? Does that help brands protect their brand? I mean, we, we we're a big believer in brand registry, but how, how good is it at helping brands stop other brands or other companies from selling on their, on their listings? Well, um, yes, we think every brand should have brand registry. Um, but how effective is it from removing sellers, you know, um, white hat not, you know, there's black hat waves, you, you know, everyone knows the old take down approach to, you're gonna get yourself sued. Um, you know, I don't, there's people using transparency for it, which isn't on the book. You're not supposed to be using, you know, the transparency through brand registry to get sellers down. And, you know, there's people who try that approach and you know, you, there's some hit or miss appro. Um, we, we don't, we don't do that cuz it's, you know, we don't, we, we believe in different approach, taking a different approach. But, um, that is, uh, something that brands will do. Um, but overall, um, you know, it's good for maintaining the used as new product being sold as the correct product, but as far as if that product is correct, it leaves little room to fix. So as long as they're selling the right product, brand registry isn't gonna do any good for you. As far as from a brand protection per perspective. When, when it's used, when, when it's used the right way, it's, it's very effective. So if you have a counterfeit product, brand registry is, it's, it's a godsend. Um, you have someone selling a knockoff on your listing brand registry is just what you need. Sometimes there's policy violations not as described, used as new. Um, like Kyle said, um, those methods work as well. I think, um, a big problem in our industry, and a lot of mistakes that brands make and some brand protection providers is they overuse it or use it the wrong way. And that way is to file false trademark complaints on authentic product. Um, there's entire niche of, of attorneys now who specialize in protecting gray market sellers who had authentic product taken down with false trademark complaints. And, um, you know, we, we see it all the time. I know a lot of brands come to Kyle and say, Hey, you know, look what we got from so-and-so attorney. Um, you know, and you know, we're beginning to recognize most of them. It's, it tends to be a certain group of attorneys who specialize in this, and you know, what they have, what they're saying is true. You can't do that. And we do know of brands that have been successfully sued and lost, um, for a good amount of money because they took down a listing and they refused to reinstate it when it was an authentic product. They couldn't prove it was counterfeit. The seller was able to prove it's authentic because authorized distributor. Um, so brands have to be very careful not to file false trademark complaints because it's very tempting. You have a huge problem, you're bleeding money, you don't know where the product is coming from. Someone says, just do whatever you can, and you just file a counterfeit complaint. The seller's gone, everyone's happy. But within a week or two, you're gonna get a very unfriendly notice from an attorney, um, if they're, if they're a serious seller. And, um, and, and all the serious sellers are lawyered up. So, um, so my thoughts on brand registries that it's extremely effective when used the right way, but it's also, um, it can also be used the wrong way. And it's, it's more dangerous than ever to use it the wrong way. Um, very, it could be very costly to use it the wrong way. So, so to recap, uh, brand protection is not a one size fits all by any means. So the brand, each brand is different, right? And you kind of come up with a strategy for each brand based on, uh, what their, their overall distribution strategy looks like, what their internal, internal strategy is and, and, and how far they really want to go to protect their brand and, and keep their channel clean. Would you agree? I think that's a great, uh, summary. Absolutely. And, um, what's your, you know, getting to the end of this, what's your advice, just your, your elevator, uh, pitch advice to brands, um, that are on Amazon today with regard to brand protection? You know, what, what's Kyle and Emmanuel's advice to brands out there? Well, give us a call. Um, but no, um, <laugh>, I think, uh, just, just at least look right, um, if it's a big issue, a small issue, a medium issue, I think take a look under the hood, um, see what's going on, educate yourself, um, understand what kind of negative effects, if negative effects are happening from either your brand integrity, your brand perception, your price is the erosion ha are gonna hurt you five years from now. Um, you know, you're, it take a holistic look and it, when you're doing so include the brand protection type topics in that look and in, in consider them for your future plans because, um, as the supply chain in this world gets crazier and crazier, and as brick and mortar environment changes and everything goes more online, um, you know, our services are gonna keep the, you know, evolving. But it's, it's really one of these things where you have to just consider it. Everyone has to consider it. Um, and then, you know, if it's you do think it's a problem, definitely consult an expert before making your first move. Um, you know, I've seen strategies from the very go wrong, from the very outset and, um, just go off the complete wrong side when it could have been resolved with, you know, a much easier solution. So my advice is just yes, give us a call, give any provider a call, an expert, you know, lawyer, anyone you trust, um, but don't make any rash decisions on what you think is best until you really, um, assess all sides. And, uh, I, I think something else, a lot of kind of old school brands, they, they, when they think of Gray Market, they think it's sort of not possible to solve. They've sort of given up on it since the seventies, eighties, nineties. They think that the only thing left they can do is sort of educate their consumers on who to buy from, who's authorized. Um, I, there's definitely some very large brands who sort of think this way. Um, we're finding that most problems can be solved. Um, generally the larger the problem, you know, more work needs to be done. But there are ways to find out where this product is coming from without always needing to get legal involved. And we're finding that most problems, no matter how large can be fixed in gray market, as long as it's done the right way and nothing rash is done, like Kyle said, and it's done intelligently in an organized manner. Methodical, most problems can be solved. Not always a hundred percent, especially if you're a gigantic brand, you're never gonna stop every single onesie twosie who's finds something on the shelf and wants to sell it. But we're able to solve most major problems to get even enterprise brands down to that 97, 98, 90 9% removal rate. If you get full buy-in on the C level, you, you reduce whatever conflicts of interest you may have with sales or, or so on. And a company decides to do this the right way and has good advisors, most gray market problems can be solved nowadays. Um, I I just want that to be clear because, because I know there, there kind of is an old school mentality that there's nothing we can do. No, I I mean, we hear it, we see it. Um, I agree. I think that's a great message. And I, I guess the big message is Amazon does not need to be the Wild West for brands. You can control your brand, you can protect your brand, and it's incredibly important to protect your brand on Amazon. You don't wanna have your brand deteriorate, uh, for, for no good reason other than you think you're getting a few more sales. You can have great sales on Amazon and you can protect your brand integrity, your pricing, and your other dealers that have been loyal to you for so many years. So, um, so important to understand this and do that exploration. Um, with that, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what is the best way to get in touch with you guys? You guys are awesome. Um, we're very responsive to inbound leads. Um, so if you wanna just go to brand alignment.com and right on our main page, one click, um, do a chat, something like that. It's direct to our inbox, so, um, you know, we're, see well, we'll I'll see it. Um, you could pick up the phone and give us a call, uh, anything like that, um, or reach out to someone, you know, one of our partners like yourself and, um, you know, find your way. So we're pretty easy to get ahold of if, if you reach out, that's. For sure. That's great. Well, and talking to us, phelps united.com, you can always find us and we can always connect you with, uh, brand alignment and brand protection program. So thank you vi thank you guys very much. I really, really appreciate you being on our show today. Um, such an important topic and thanks for covering it. I mean, I know we could talk all day about it, uh, but I think we covered most of the bases and, um, let's say where it takes us. Well, thanks again. Awesome. Thanks Adam. Hey, thanks Adam.