How To Climb The Walls Of Amazon

For an emerging beauty brand, passing through the pearly gates of Amazon could very well be trickier than passing through the pearly gates of heaven. The e-commerce giant has come down hard on Amazon aspirants with heightened restrictions making listing as a beauty seller extremely challenging if not almost impossible. The consequence is Amazon is becoming a better place for brands that have been offering merchandise on its platform for a while and the democratization of commerce it has driven may be diminishing. Of course, Amazon remains an enormous portal for sales that brands can’t ignore, but they have to be aware that it’s no longer always an eager business partner. “I try not to be a bummer. With all the downsides of Amazon, there still are opportunities for people in all walks of life,” says CJ Rosenbaum, an attorney with Rosenbaum Famularo PC. “Amazon is the most incredible opportunity in perhaps the history of commerce.” Beauty Independent talked with Rosenbaum, beauty entrepreneurs and other experts about wading through the morass that is the Amazon topical products entrance process.

What’s behind the barriers
What’s behind the barriers
In January, Amazon erected so-called gates around the merchandise subcategory it dubs topicals that many beauty products are shuffled into. The gates are extra layers of approval seller hopefuls are forced to work through in order to list topical products on Amazon. Exactly what constitutes a topical product to Amazon is unclear. Attorney Marc Sanchez speculates the term topicals was originally intended to refer to over-the-counter topical medicines such as acne solutions with the certain percentages of the active ingredients benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid and sunscreens that have greater U.S. Food and Drug Administration Agency regulatory oversight than standard beauty products. “What they seemed to be doing was making a distinction between topicals that have beauty purposes versus those that are therapeutic and provide a medicinal effect, but what’s not consistent is what they are identifying as topicals and what they aren’t,” he says. Every beauty product imaginable has fallen into the topicals group from foot scrubs to anti-aging serums. Beauty Independent reached out to Amazon for clarification and received no response. The e-commerce giant may have added restrictions to the topicals category to fend off counterfeits, but it hasn’t revealed if fakes are a rationale. Amazon may also be implementing approval steps to ensure the stocks sold on its platform are high quality. Again, it hasn’t offered an explanation stating quality is a reason for gating. Rosenbaum surmises Amazon is protecting big brands. “There was this whole shtick that they were going to treat all brands equally, and you had to know that was nonsense,” he says. “Nike is not getting treated the same as CJ T-shirts.”
Requirements to get past the gates
Requirements to get past the gates
Once Amazon pushes a seller wannabe into the topicals subcategory or the wannabe applies for it, there are several pieces of documentation Amazon requests, including invoices, a certificate of analysis (COA), a good manufacturing practices (GMP) certificate and an FDA Orange Book application number. Only one of the latter three documents are mandated, notes Tuvyah Schleifer, founder and CEO of CRSeller, who points out major retailers have been asking for these materials prior to Amazon's topicals subcategory gating. Topicals applicants with a vending history should be able to drum up invoices. Comments in online seller forums indicate applicants should supply three of them. Amazon doesn’t specify that number. It orders one invoice from a manufacturer or distributor that shows the purchase of at least five different topical products. Manufacturers can furnish brands with COA and GMP documents. FDA Orange Book applications have caused topicals candidates the most aggravation. As defined by the FDA, the Orange Book identifies drugs that have been approved for safety and effectiveness. Since beauty products aren’t drugs, they have no role in the Orange Book, but Amazon doesn’t differentiate in its documentation demands between beauty products and drugs. Discussing the Orange Book, Sanchez says, “If you are Merck or Pfizer, you can get something listed. It requires at least three to four years of work, and is intended for pioneering drugs. It’s not intended for anything else.” He continues that cosmetics companies can voluntarily register beauty products with the FDA using the agency’s forms 2511 and 2512. Sanchez has found snapping pictures of 2511 or 2512 registrations can be impactful in assuaging Amazon occasionally, but there is no universal rule for how Amazon treats them. Beyond the documentation, Amazon asks for $3,000 from topicals applicants. “Fees help sellers step up to the plate,” says Schleifer. “I see this as means to acknowledge that they are taking this opportunity in a serious manner.”
The onerous Amazon admission process
The onerous Amazon admission process
“I’ve yet to experience proper classification of a topical,” says Sanchez. “Every time a client inquires about the topicals category, I’m left scratching my head.” Wendi Sudhakar, founder and CEO of Kudarat, had no plan to list her skincare brand in the topicals subcategory. The brand had been selling on Amazon when its product pages were suddenly halted. After spending a month chasing down answers from Amazon about why the pages were stopped, Kudarat was told it would have to apply to the topicals subcategory in order to do business on Amazon. “Skincare on Amazon got to be very saturated. There were some less than quality products being offered, and this is Amazon’s less-than-desirable way to make major barriers to entry,” says Sudhakar. “If you’re already in, you’re grandfathered from all this, but, if you’re new, it’s not going to happen.” Initially, Kudarat attempted to send in the topicals documentation to Amazon on its own. It didn’t succeed in achieving a listing using that strategy. Kudarat then hired a firm to coach it through the topicals process. “They said, ‘This is ridiculous. It’s now virtually impossible for beauty brands that are new to get on Amazon,’” reports Sudhakar. “At that point, we thought, ‘We are a startup. We have other areas to focus on. So, we ditched it.’” Although Tiffany Bailey’s health and beauty products brand The Medical Mommas didn’t have an existing Amazon listing, her experience was similar to Sudhakar’s experience. “Every time you call Amazon, you get a different person helping you. I finally got one person who straight up told me it didn’t really matter what I did. I might as well just give up,” she says. In online forums, there are sellers revealing they’ve scored approvals in the topicals category following several months of painstaking back and forth. Similar to Sudhakar, Bailey hired an outside firm to guide her through the Amazon onboarding process. Bailey stuck with the process for eight months and, today, the firm is selling The Medical Mommas products on Amazon. “Amazon is very much like the government. When you call to ask questions, they give you an answer and will not explain it. It’s just a no,” says Bailey. “Amazon is not geared toward small businesses at all. I feel like they don’t really want them.”
Possible solutions to Amazon listing difficulties 
Possible solutions to Amazon listing difficulties 
Bailey and Sudhakar turned to firms to assist them with getting on Amazon. Bailey’s brand has landed on Amazon as a result, and she’s been pleased with the efforts of the firm she retained. “I certainly feel like the money we paid them was well worth it. I would have never been able to do it myself,” she says. Hiring consultants or lawyers, though, isn’t a guarantee of an Amazon presence. Rosenbaum warns there are growing numbers of snake oil salesmen preying on entrepreneurs with Amazon in their sights. “What I would strongly suggest is to do a lot of your own research and read the seller forums,” he says. “A lot of sellers can handle it themselves.” He’s not opposed, however, to securing an outside firm if seller aspirants simply can’t make it over Amazon hump as a long as they proceed with caution in evaluating the firm. “You might as well give it a shot. It might lower the stress of application,” he says, advising, “I always like vendors to get to know the person they are working with, not just their website.” Sanchez counsels clients posited in the topicals subcategory to try to convince Amazon to permit them to apply for listing in a different category. If they aren’t reassigned to a different category, he instructs them to be a nag. “I tell clients in this category to be patient and absolutely persistent,” says Sanchez. “Keep bugging, emailing, calling and raising the issue because the squeaky wheel gets attention. You want to make sure you are the squeaky wheel.”