Chris is a successful entrepreneur whose resume includes successful ventures in marketing, import/export, Brand Creation, and consulting. Over the years, he has built and sold several companies while also assisting numerous brands in achieving rapid growth on Amazon. Currently, he is a seven-figure Amazon seller and a consultant for multiple companies, specializing in brand protection on the platform.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, hosted by Josh Hadley, Chris Lyell shares strategies for enforcing intellectual property (IP) rights on Amazon, protecting brands from hijackers and resellers, and overcoming challenges faced by seven-figure Amazon sellers. Chris discusses the importance of Amazon’s Transparency Program to combat counterfeit products and protect listings. He also highlights the complexities of maintaining Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) across multiple sales channels and offers actionable advice for developing a robust IP protection strategy. The episode provides valuable insights for business owners aiming to scale their e-commerce operations and safeguard their brands.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

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Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordovez and Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth. Today I’m speaking with Chris Lyell, and we’re going to be talking about how you can enforce your rights on Amazon to not only protect your IP, your intellectual property, but how you can create a digital moat around your business to protect you from hijackers, resellers and all that good stuff. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious entrepreneur and looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring that hands-on experience, the strategic insights, and the resources ready to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale and looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s ecom with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality.

Josh Hadley 00:00:48  Today I’m excited to introduce you all to Chris Lyell. Chris is a successful entrepreneur whose resume includes successful ventures in marketing, import and export, brand creation, and consulting. Over the years, he has built and sold several companies while also assisting numerous brands in achieving rapid growth on Amazon. Currently, he is a seven figure Amazon seller and a consultant for multiple companies specializing in brand protection on the platform. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Chris.

Chris Lyell 00:01:11  Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Josh Hadley 00:01:12  Chris. I’m super excited to have you on the show because you’ve got some wicked smart strategies and hacks that arguably I would say you need to be on that speaking circuit and on on stage of speaking. But we met when I was speaking at the Billion Dollar Seller summit in quiet Kevin King’s event and the brief conversations that we had, I was like, all right, Chris has got some wicked smart knowledge. We’re going to have to bring him on the show. And so I’m very impressed with what you’re doing.

Josh Hadley 00:01:34  And we spent a lot of time before we hit the record button going down some fun rabbit holes.

Chris Lyell 00:01:38  Oh yeah, I’m excited to chat.

Josh Hadley 00:01:40  So Chris in 2024. Speaking to, you know, seven figure Amazon sellers so to speak. What are you seeing like the biggest challenges. And you know your advantages like IP protection on the Amazon platform. What does that mean and what challenges do you see brands facing right now?

Chris Lyell 00:01:56  I think there’s a couple different challenges. One of them, obviously Amazon’s fees are getting excessive inbound transportation fees, things related to that. I’m experiencing that myself. Trying to figure out how to navigate like Amazon’s forcing us to do the, to use their warehouse or distribution network or things of that nature. So that’s one of the issues people are facing. I think the other one, and we kind of touched on this earlier and we chatted, was people are dealing with a lot of resellers jumping on their listings, things like that. Usually if you’re a seven figure, eight figure seller, you’re going to have other sources that you sell to, you know, distribute your products to.

Chris Lyell 00:02:25  And a lot of people are dealing with either people that are hijacking the actual buy box or just in general, lowering their overall MSRP because of the fact they’re selling on some other platforms eBay, you know, Walmart online, target, they’re selling their products at a lower price, which essentially can get rid of or suppress the buy box. So that’s another issue that’s facing or people are facing like headwinds with and trying to figure out how to, you know, kind of navigate that situation.

Josh Hadley 00:02:46  Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I’ve shared earlier on in this podcast and other episodes is that, you know, I think Amazon’s got the margin squeeze going right now. And I argue that in the next 5 to 10 years, Amazon ultimately becomes like that pay to play type of game where your margins are quite a bit smaller on Amazon, just like they are on in retail. Right. Like in the grocery category, for example, a lot of people are working in single digit like profit margins, and so does Amazon get to a point where you’re working with single digit profit margins, because you’ve got all these overseas sellers that feel like they can make a quick buck.

Josh Hadley 00:03:19  They don’t need to have a real brand name to get into a retail store. or they need a brand name to get into a retail store. But on Amazon, you can just create some stupid brand name and you’re up and running, would you? Do you see that future coming to pass over the next 5 to 10 years?

Chris Lyell 00:03:32  Absolutely. it’s funny because a lot of people I talk to always said, you never want to get into retail. They’re always squeeze and always squeeze. And I’m in retail and they are always squeezing. But I am seeing it also from the Amazon side. I mean my margins In 2018, when I didn’t have to pay for advertising, I knew exactly what I’d make. On every sale I get 100 sales and I’d be stoked. I’d be like, oh my God, I made great money. Now I don’t know what the day is going to end that. Am I going to actually positive or negative on certain brands because of all the competition? And you know what the fees were just for inbound a container was an extra seven grand.

Chris Lyell 00:03:57  If I have a container with a, you know, 11,000 units. so I do see that happening. I think a lot of people are experiencing it, in more like the common categories. I think it may be a little bit, it may be a little bit longer until it kind of hits some of the niche categories. But when you’re in a competitive marketplace like this right now, I think everything’s getting down to that really close to maybe 12, 15% after all fees, or, you know, margin similar to that in retail.

Josh Hadley 00:04:20  So so that’s honestly why I wanted to bring you on to the podcast is because you have experience selling into retail. And I’ve, I’ve had many conversations with other e-commerce brand owners, and some of them have said, hey, you know, just continue focusing on Amazon. Don’t worry about the other sales channels. They’re a waste of time. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. And specifically in regards to retail, they’re like, oh, you’re opening up a can of worms.

Josh Hadley 00:04:42  Juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Don’t don’t go into retail. You’re an e-commerce Amazon first brand only. What would you say to those people and knowing that you are in retail, can you help maybe uncover like when does retail make sense? And for what type of brands and what what’s the play there.

Chris Lyell 00:04:56  Yeah. So it’s interesting question because I think there are certain brands that you just stick to Amazon. There may not be enough order volume from retail. That would make sense. I I’ll give you one of the products I have is in Walmart in-store. We do about 170,000 units annually. That’s a lot, right? I don’t know how you turn that down, whether it comes with tons of headaches or not. that margin, if you can squeeze even two bucks per unit, that’s a significant amount of money in profit, right? but there are a ton of headaches that come with it. of course, you know, you you’re always fighting. Oh, it didn’t get delivered. Whatever the case is.

Chris Lyell 00:05:26  I’ll give you an example. One of the retailers is Walmart. there is constant, you know. Oh, this didn’t show up. They say they didn’t show up. You have to fight. You have to open up cases. I mean, it’s definitely a lot of work. You have to have an individual person that does that for you. But, still, the margin is there and it makes sense. I think it can create your brand, which will create additional like people may go into a store, see it, it’s got that, you know, they remember it. I ended up not buying it. Boom. I go on Amazon like it is an extra way for you to create more sales on Amazon as well. you just have to basically, you know, really look at the look at the economics of it and see if it makes sense to take on kind of a little bit of stress if it’s that type of volume. I don’t see how you couldn’t expand your business if you had the opportunity to do it.

Chris Lyell 00:06:01  so it’s definitely difficult, but it’s worth, I think, I think the juice is worth the squeeze now that I’m in it.

Josh Hadley 00:06:05  How long does it take to kind of get that ball rolling right? I would love to have one of my products sell 170,000 units a year in Walmart stores, right? But did it start with a small trickle first? Did you have to get on fair and you’re selling to more boutique stores and, you know, then eventually you worked up to getting into Amazon or into Walmart.

Chris Lyell 00:06:22  So some of the some of the retailers that we’ve spoken to, we’ve been in some and then we end up not working with them any longer. It just, you know, it all depends on what their appetite is or they have something new they want to bring in. But for Walmart it’s an interesting, they actually want to see some of your Amazon sales to see that there is traction for the product. they would like you to have sales now that they’re on Walmart, you know, they have their third party platform.

Chris Lyell 00:06:39  It makes a little bit more sense. They want to see what your sales are on their website, what their customers are thinking. But the actual process takes almost a year to get in because they do what they call mods. Every usually it’s in like September, October. They will, have meetings with you. Prior to that, they set up and look and make sure the product is going to be a fit for them. They may talk to you in May and say, okay, we’re planning on bringing you in in September. October. We need you to bring in X number of units to start. So you have a massive field that you need to bring in, have the product waiting to be distributed there stores. So it is definitely a big upfront capital expenditure as well. but it’s planning and all that. But once it’s rolling it is very consistent. And you know, it’s definitely once you’re in you’re like, okay, this was definitely worth it. I think I was a little bit nervous as we were starting, like, man, this is a big capital investment.

Chris Lyell 00:07:19  I hope they’re going to be buying what they say they’re going to be buying, because there is no guarantee in any way, you know? but they’ve continued to renew us and it’s been an amazing partnership. So, Walmart, if you wanna bring any other products on, I’m interested obviously, if you’re listening. But yeah, it’s very, very it’s very it’s not a short, start to finish there. You definitely have probably 12 months in, in time before you’re in stores.

Josh Hadley 00:07:36  What would be your recommendation if somebody wants to go into retail and, they’re not in there yet, where would you recommend they start?

Chris Lyell 00:07:43  So there are brokers that do have connections to a lot of the buyers for different categories in Walmart, target. there’s like in like QVC brokers, there’s Costco brokers. I would just, maybe, you know, connect with them, don’t pay anything. Just find one. I can probably, give you one to maybe put it in show notes. That would be a good recommendation. And talk to them and see what their.

Chris Lyell 00:08:02  You know, those people know what the what the buyers are looking for. and they can say, hey, I don’t think this can be a good fit. I don’t want to ring it in front of them or whatever the case is. They only have so many meetings that they can go with, so they’re going to be somebody that knows one. I’d like to hitch my wagon onto your product because I do think it’ll be successful. They do take some commissions and things like that related to your sales volume. So they’re incentivized to take in products that they think will be successful. So you at least get some good real feedback from these guys because it’s directly correlated to that if they think it can sell in that store. I think that’s one of the ways, you know, if you know somebody that’s in store and you may be in a similar category, obviously ask them, hey, is there a way you could just give me an introduction so I can send them a sample, see what they think? but it is definitely a kind of a gatekeeper situation.

Chris Lyell 00:08:35  the buyers like to work with the same bigger companies. it seems like from what I understand, there’s a lot of, difficulty getting into some of these other retailers that I’ve been trying to get into. I mean, I’m like, look, we sell this many units or like, we’re not looking to take anything new in this, in this category. So it’s definitely very competitive. a broker can help you kind of break through that gate, though.

Josh Hadley 00:08:51  Do you recommend people get on to, like, fair and stuff like that? So I.

Chris Lyell 00:08:54  I’m not unfair right now. I know people who’ve had a lot of success on there. I think it isn’t a bad idea. I think there are some negatives to selling to people off Amazon. If you’re not going into big box with, like the volume that we’re talking about, which you and I kind of touched on prior to the show, you know, hijackers and people jumping on listings and things like that, they can buy with a fake company or whatever unfair or a different country than they’re going to sell on Amazon, even though you say you cannot sell on Amazon.

Chris Lyell 00:09:15  They may take and undercut you. They’re willing to deal with less margin than you because they only about 50 units versus your 10,000 plus 10,000 Po. Yeah. and they’re looking to make a quick buck instead of actually, you know, maintaining those pricing, MSRP and all those things that you want in that pricing.

Josh Hadley 00:09:28  So, Chris, as you talk about like the IP protection, and you’re consulting for other brands about this, what all does that entail?

Chris Lyell 00:09:37  So what we kind of talked about earlier was a digital mode, right. there’s three different ways that I think you can protect your brand. One of them is through utility or patent enforcement and protection. that’s one pillar. The other one is either through trademark or design patents as well. And then the third one is and this is kind of what we’ve just talked about, which is if you are selling to other distributors or resellers or wholesalers, is the hijacker or buy box protection, you’re trying to keep your actual digital moat around people being able to even get on your listing to sell or steal some of your sales on your on your product.

Josh Hadley 00:10:05  I love that. And I think those are those are some very juicy topics. Let’s talk about utility pants, because I believe I’ve heard there’s like an Apex program where Amazon does this kind of like neutral Panda evaluation. Can you give our listeners those who have utility pants, which is definitely the most effective plan that’s out there? give us an insight of like how you go about defending that, utilizing the Apex program and your experience there.

Chris Lyell 00:10:25  Yeah. So Amazon, you know, the utility patents are probably the most cut and dry patents. So Amazon can look at that patent itself and realize it’s basically like product doing the same functionality. So they created what’s called the Apex program, which is the it’s a neutral patent evaluation program. It’s an express patent. Evaluation is what it stands for. I don’t know what the A itself stands for, but basically you can do a submission to Amazon takes about 21 days after submission. You say, okay, I think these number of people are infringing on my patent. You submit that to them, they notify all the sellers and give them the opportunity to pay to have a patent evaluator basically decide if the product is infringing or not.

Chris Lyell 00:10:56  if anybody raised their hand and said, hey, I do think this product is, not infringing. Both parties have to put money into a trust account with an attorney, and then that attorney basically will ask for you to basically provide your side of the story of why it is or is not infringing, and then that evaluator will make a decision. If you win and you’re the patent older, you get your $4,000 back. That person is taken off of Amazon. If you lose, they keep your $4,000. You have no effect on that person’s allowed to continue to sell. you know, nine times out of ten, you know, they’re infringing. Most people aren’t gonna put their hands up. I do think there are some overseas sellers who have figured out kind of how to not gain the system, but prolong it, as well as if they do get taken down, how to jump themselves back on. So you kind of know how to need to know how to deal with that, but you’re going to be able to take down about 90% of the sellers if they are infringing through this program within 21 days.

Chris Lyell 00:11:40  So, it’s great to know that there’s a timeline to it. You know, there’s some finality to it when you go to, like, design patent, trademark infringement. You don’t know what you’re going to get. It’s very unpredictable. You got to continue to go after it over and over and over and keep resubmitting. The people who are reviewing that are usually like tier one or tier two seller support. They just look, nope. Maybe these people are working on like, I got to get through 50 cases and 20 minutes or something. Yeah. so it’s very hit and miss. It’s super frustrating. It’s like, this is so obvious. These are literally identical. And they’ll be like, nope, don’t think they’re infringing. There is no simple path for that one. utility again, cut and dry. Our company works on money back guarantee on those type of utility patent enforcements because of the fact that we know if we submit it, we know we’re submitting this in good faith. We know for sure our legal team has looked at it and said, this is 100% infringing, and we go at it and do that.

Chris Lyell 00:12:23  So it’s definitely two different worlds, I love that.

Josh Hadley 00:12:25  Okay, so the Apex program, a utility plan, more cut and dry. You briefly mentioned this. Like the oversea sellers, they don’t play by our rules. And so that’s why they and we saw this at the billion dollar seller summit. We had somebody from one of those overseas sellers give us the dirt on what what tactics they’re doing. Some of them have thousands of accounts ready to go at a moment’s notice. And that’s the game they’re playing. It’s just like, oh yeah, got this one taken down next, next, next. So I guess my question on that is Chris, how do you defend against somebody doing that. It’s like okay they got their main account taken down. Now they now they moved over. They shifted inventory to the new account. How do you deal with that?

Chris Lyell 00:12:59  So there is if you go through the patent evaluation, usually it’s two separate rounds. You have to do this. So it’s about 60 days.

Chris Lyell 00:13:06  Amazon will give you what we basically called a court order. But they give you an internal number an apex number. That is essentially what gives you the ability to see if another person pops up. That may not be that seller. It could just be anybody that pops up that is infringing exactly like we were just doing with them. You can submit it with that number and Amazon will remove them within 24 hours. So after a certain amount of time, these guys are like, is the juice worth the squeeze to send more inventory into FBA to create a new listing? And they realize usually once you do this, they will stop somewhat right after because of the fact that they know you’re not messing around, the fact that you would put up the money in it, you know, have a legal team write up a letter, all that stuff. but some products are obviously so lucrative that they’re going to continue to do it over and over and over again. and at that point, it’s whac-a-mole we have, you know, we have a team that goes through and actually looks and finds every single day and just does a new submission.

Chris Lyell 00:13:48  And it’s just I mean, they may still 1 or 2 sales, but you sell 10,000 units a month. You know, it’s worth it to, to continue to whack them all these guys and get rid of them. And then finally they’ll just move on to the next product. We know they don’t innovate. You just gotta find the next part to copy and continue on.

Josh Hadley 00:13:59  Interesting. All right I love that. Great great strategies. Great takeaways okay. Talking about design patterns and even trademarks. Maybe copyrights are in the same bucket. You said you have to continue resubmitting over and over again. Where are you submitting these?

Chris Lyell 00:14:12  So in brand registry there’s a report violation tool. you can you can do searches by assigns. You can do searches by brand name things like that. And it’ll pull up products. You can look at them and see, you know, are these products infringing or whatever the case is, are they using my trademark name? Is this my exact design? Usually you’ll do that on Amazon, pull a list of that and then you put it in there.

Chris Lyell 00:14:29  You would select in the report violation all those assignees. And then you would do a submission through brand registry. and it takes anywhere from 24 hours to probably up to a week for a response. Well, they’ll just say, you know, removed or not accepted. If it’s not accepted, then you go back and continue to do submissions over and over. one of the tips I will give listeners if they are going to report anything is, as I just said, actually, when I said, you know, you put them on a list, I would submit each one of those individually. Let Amazon look at it solely because let’s say that there’s a group of ten. Yeah. You submitted. And the first one they look at there like that is not infringing. They’re going to just deny all nine because they’re like, oh, none of these are infringing. Yeah. So get it so that they have to look at that one individually. And that’s your only submission. So you can also, you know, go okay I’m successful on 30 submissions and you know, ten weren’t let’s redo those ten versus, you know, two submissions.

Chris Lyell 00:15:14  And then you keep trying. It’s never going to get you any sort of flywheel motion to get those people removed.

Josh Hadley 00:15:18  Do you ever have experiences where Amazon just flat out refuses to accept it?

Chris Lyell 00:15:22  Yes. Unfortunately that has been the case. I mean, then you have to decide how important it is, how much the sales are stealing. and if you want to, you need to take it almost like a court order type route where you can actually get an injunction and things like that. We have not done that on design patents for anybody. Most people, you know, we’ve been successful. We probably had 1 or 2 that we just could not get through. And it’s not, I mean, if you talk to any patent attorney as well, I’m not an attorney, by the way. None of this is legal advice, just a disclaimer. But if you talk to the patent or any sort of enforcement attorneys, they’re going to have similar stories where it does not get through Amazon’s ecosystem for whatever reason.

Chris Lyell 00:15:51  I don’t know if there’s something they have marked on certain accounts where they’re like, we will not take this down. It’s too big of an account. I’m not sure what it is, but when it’s literally like product two, it’s we’re not talking about like maybe they’re really replicas, you know?

Josh Hadley 00:16:04  okay. I have a follow up question on that because I’ve heard and I saw in a couple different Facebook groups, lately that couple sellers had their access to reporting a violation on brand registry actually revoked. And I don’t know if it was because they sent too many like they filed too many times. Like you’re saying, it’s like, oh, it didn’t work this time. Let me re file this week. Let me re file this week. Let me re file this week. What if that happens and you come back ten times and Amazon’s like yeah you fool. Like we keep saying no we’re just going to remove this tool from your access. Do you see that as a risk or why do you think that people get that revoked?

Chris Lyell 00:16:38  You know, and I’m not saying any of these people did anything wrong.

Chris Lyell 00:16:40  because I haven’t had that happen. But if you’re if you continue to submit and use their resources in their mind and it is not like, oh, there is a chance, I guess they could pull that. I’ve never seen that anybody get the tool pulled from them unless they deem it as some sort of like, you know, you’re doing this out of like in bad faith, essentially trying to submit people, get them removed. again, not accusing anybody of any of that. I don’t know what Amazon’s you know, what they could be thinking doing that because Amazon does have you know they want to protect the sellers. They do have a responsibility to enforce on those. You know they can’t willfully just look away. That seems kind of crazy that they would pull those. so I haven’t seen that. and hopefully that doesn’t happen anybody. And we do this. You know, we’ve been doing this for a lot of different accounts. I will say one of the things that we have done, that you can do is you can open up a brand registry account with a different email address and make yourself a, you know, a user of the trademark and be an enforcement agent separately.

Chris Lyell 00:17:27  So maybe it wouldn’t ding the main account if that was the case. I don’t necessarily recommend doing that, but I do know you can, you know, basically give yourself permissions on other accounts that are just brand registry accounts, not Amazon account necessarily, and do some submissions. Because if you’re sometimes lawyers will do that, they’ll do their own account and do submissions. Right. It might be not a workaround, but a way to maybe not damage your entire portfolio if you have other brands, only attribute it to that email address. But yeah, I’m not sure. Again, what would cause that from Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:17:51  Interesting. Love that love, love that perspective though. I think those are insightful tools. Have you ever had success like mailing in letters or anything like that? Because I know you could also like submit an email, right? You don’t have to go through the brand registry tool. You had any success that way before.

Chris Lyell 00:18:05  We before ever submitting to, brand registry. Like a long time ago I did, you know, it was like I forgot what was reported.

Chris Lyell 00:18:11  Amazon.com or report infringement at Amazon.com. That’s how we got a lot of people removed them. Originally on products that I had, we would literally attach the patent and say, this is a direct infringement, our attorney is confirmed, blah, blah, blah. We’d send it and we get responses. Now, usually if you send emails, it’ll come back and say, this is not the proper pathway for you to do a reporting. You need to do it through the website. You can do like Amazon.com forward slash I think it’s report or then brand registry. So they don’t I haven’t heard anybody having really success outside of that, unless you have an actual attorney involved and you’re talking about doing a suit or things of that nature. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:18:42  Awesome details. All right. Anything before we move on to the hijacker, IP protection, anything else do you think our listeners should know about utility pad protection, design pads, copyrights, anything like that?

Chris Lyell 00:18:55  I just think, you know, don’t don’t think it’s like this, Goliath to go and actually enforce your patent.

Chris Lyell 00:19:01  You know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of people think, oh, it’s just going to be way too difficult or expensive if you have the right partner to work with doing it. It’s not. And we could talk about this later. An example of a big brand that thought they were at the end of their rope and weren’t able to be able to do any enforcement. and that company, we’ve taken down over 650 infringers in the last 12 months, which was over. They were doing over $1 million a month. The infringers were like a huge brand that does pool related items and accessories. And we’re still working with them today. We’re on, we continue to take down sellers because it’s peak season right now, which is where they were getting tons of infringers popping up, stealing their sales. and they thought they were going to have millions of dollars in lawsuits and things that have to do outside of court. They have a legal team in, in, in house, and they still couldn’t navigate the system.

Chris Lyell 00:19:40  They started working with us. We’re not attorneys. We just know how to work through the system properly. We have legal connections within Amazon, and we were able to continually remove all these infringers. So as of last week, I think we’re at 650 652 infringers that are gone.

Josh Hadley 00:19:51  That’s amazing. Yeah, that is amazing. Well, and that obviously creates a deep moat around the business when you can actually get it. Yep. Do you ever worry about retaliation or have you experienced any retaliation?

Chris Lyell 00:20:02  I don’t worry about retaliation. because I think the people, a lot of the people that are infringing seem to be overseas sellers, and they just move on to the next thing. I don’t know if they even really take it personally. It’s just like part of the culture is to be able to do certain things like this and think it’s actually a good thing, you know, to go, I’m gonna copy this, I’m gonna make a bunch of money, just kind of on to the next. I’m sure there are some sellers who’ve experienced some sort of, you know, retaliation, but we have not, at least with any of the brains that we’ve worked with.

Chris Lyell 00:20:27  When I first started on Amazon, I did have people that were very upset when I was removing people for infringing on patents. I was like, back in the good old days where people were making tons of money, and I think there was a lot of income that really got removed from their, you know, their bottom line and overseas sellers. Yeah. and I was like, whoa, this is crazy. And then ever since then, I’ve never had anything that’s been almost six years, so.

Josh Hadley 00:20:45  Okay. I love it. Great experience. So if people want to, pick your brain on that, we’ll, we’ll have a, we’ll leave some time at the end where you can tell people how to follow you and connect with you. Absolutely. That’s a huge value add. All right, Chris, now here is something I have never heard of before. and you shared it with me and my mind was blown. Basically, you’re saying that you can create a digital moat and IP protection, even if you’re selling into retail and wholesale to prevent hijackers and from other people getting on to your or being able to resell your product on your own listing.

Josh Hadley 00:21:16  So why don’t you maybe break down this kind of strategy?

Chris Lyell 00:21:21  Okay, so there’s a couple different ideas behind this. First off, one of the things I think a lot of people are just like, well, if somebody sells my product because they bought it in a store, that ‘s immediately, you have to let people sell the product because of the for sale doctrine. That’s kind of a little bit changing narrative now because of I don’t know if you’ve looked up and ever heard about the OtterBox for Sale Doctrine lawsuit, where there was a person that tried to say, weird, OtterBox sued somebody basically stating that they were infringing on their trademark and they’re selling counterfeit product. and the people that tried to get it dismissed, basically saying it was a for sale doctrine. The court upheld that the products were materially different because there was a warrant. They have warranties on the product which is for sale of doctrine. Those people that sold it at a second hand could not be able to offer those customers.

Chris Lyell 00:22:03  And then there’s something related to the way that the product is stored and fulfilled. so there are some workarounds in regards to the first sale doctrine, being able to send out some letters and different things related to that to customers or people that jump onto your listings. That’s one one methodology that some people use. The other one is making it so it is not the exact same product that’s being sold. People that buy a product in retail may have a product with a completely different UPC, not an identical product. And the product you have on Amazon may have its own UPC. This is probably what we’d say. Gray hat. just for listeners. But if you have a product on Amazon and you’re selling that product and you’re going to sell the product into stores, maybe you have some variation on that product and it’s going to have a different UPC code. So the products that you were selling into retail cannot be sold on that same listing, because it’s not a similar product. You can prove that to Amazon. there’s one other way to at least enforce this or find out who was selling the product that is basically not supposed to be sold on your listing.

Chris Lyell 00:22:53  Most people who are buying, if they’re buying from like a distributor or something like that, know that they’re not supposed to sell on Amazon, or if they’re buying on, let’s say, fair, which we were talking about a little bit ago. if your product has transparency codes on them, which I’m sure a lot of people heard about the transparency program, we can talk about more about it. but each single label, each product has its own basically license plate to that product. So if I sold products, you know, 50 units and they all had license plates where I marked it, I know I sold it to this person on fair. And then there’s a reseller that shows up on Amazon. I can buy their product and look at that license, but what if it doesn’t have the license plate on it? Then it’s definitely counterfeit because you’re supposed to put that on all products, or you can look at it, find who the leak is and who’s actually trying to not honor whatever they signed to the agreement on not selling, and cut them off completely to not sell on Amazon because you can identify them based on those individual license plates, like we talked about that they bought the product with.

Josh Hadley 00:23:38  So do you have to with the transparency program, you’re getting codes and there’s like a number on each.

Chris Lyell 00:23:43  And it’s like a barcode or like a QR code. But if you actually when you’re in the transparency program, each one of it has its own like number. So if you scan that code you can actually see who it was sold to. as the transparency portal owner. And you can actually look up the code that’s attached to that QR code and see who that was actually sold to. You can actually individualize the lots. You can say, okay, this lot number one through 50 is going to Joe Joe LLC. And now when I go and I see it pop up, I’m like, who is this guy that doesn’t say that on Amazon? Go to scan it. I’m like, all right Joe, you’re cut off, buddy. Call him and say to remove your inventory or never buy from me again. Yeah, that’s how it would work.

Josh Hadley 00:24:16  Are you. So is your warehouse having to be the ones that understand, like.

Josh Hadley 00:24:19  All right, these are what? In this box we’ve got one through 50. In this case we’ve got 51 through 100, etc. in order to know like when this box goes out, you know, how are you knowing in the way that.

Chris Lyell 00:24:32  So the way that we do it is we don’t necessarily sell to some of the smaller people. So we’ll do like the way that we do it is actually our, manufacturer in China. We’ll give them these 2500 units are going to be marked with these 2500 transparency codes. And we know that those ones are individualized and set for that. I’m sure there’s some serialization or things you can mark on the boxes to do all that stuff. We do it basically on order specifically for whatever retailer we work with. So that’s kind of a different way of doing it. But, I’ll give you an example. If you are, if you don’t have them tagged at all and then you have your three P.O., that’s going to send it out to a customer, you can say, okay, here’s 50 units that we have allotted for this particular shipment, and they can ship it out, tag them as they send them out so you can keep track of it that way, versus it’ll be a little more expensive at the three level versus overseas level.

Chris Lyell 00:25:11  But that’s another way to keep it where it’s, you know, at least while you’re starting out, working with some smaller, you know, people that are wholesaling from you just to control that. And then when you get to a larger number, then you can obviously just have it done at the factory level.

Josh Hadley 00:25:21  So why don’t you tell us a little bit more, a few more details into the transparency program, because it sounds like when you do this, it’s not like you. I guess here would be my question. You can’t just put a transparency code only on the products you’re sending to those wholesalers. Like even all of the shipments you send in personally for your own brand need to have that transparency code on them, correct?

Chris Lyell 00:25:41  Right. So Amazon, the transparency program is supposed to be if you enroll, you don’t have to have like let’s say your catalog is 100 100 products, not 100 have to have transparency, but maybe there’s one that’s a problem. Skew, for whatever reason, super popular.

Chris Lyell 00:25:53  If you enroll that product into transparency, Amazon expects you to put that label on every single product that you manufacture. So if it goes, even if you were selling, like I’d say to Walmart, they expect a transparency code on that product in Walmart. and so that’s Amazon’s way of basically allowing you to have transparency into kind of your, your supply chain, right where everything’s going and be able to look at all that stuff. But and their whole point is, if you don’t have a transparency label on it, then it’s a counterfeit product, right? Yeah. So I understand the premise behind that, but then it doesn’t really protect you necessarily from some of the resellers. It only allows you to see who it was and then try to cut that off the head out there. Okay. So you’ll see a lot of like products that have really like tons of reviews. Almost all of them are in transparency because there’s a lot of people who create replicas overseas and they’ll send it in under yours. Can’t get rid of them.

Chris Lyell 00:26:34  I have no way of doing any, you know, stopping them in your in your listing unless you’re doing some of the ways we talked about earlier. Yeah. but if they were to send in product and you have transparency turned on, sending a product without a transparency code on it, Amazon, if they have the transparency checks turned on, which they will, if you’re in the program, will mark all their inventory defective and require them to be removed because they assume them as counterfeit. So that’s kind of the program itself. It takes about 30 days to enroll. You have to do some like checks back and forth with Amazon. Make sure you apply them correctly. You send in 100 units that are properly labeled. After that, they inform anybody who’s on your listing that going forward, you will have to provide a product with transparency codes that continue to sell, and after that, usually it seals a lot of people are there like, oh crap, somebody’s really watching this listing. I’m not going to be buying this as like an arbitrage seller or whatever and go to the next, okay.

Josh Hadley 00:27:17  What’s the cost for this?

Chris Lyell 00:27:20  I believe. And they usually will do. If you’re a new enrollee, they’ll give you like 10,000 codes for free. After that it’s between 3 and $0.05 per per code.

Josh Hadley 00:27:28  So it’s like an extra 3 to $0.05 per unit, essentially per unit.

Chris Lyell 00:27:30  Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna obviously have to pay somebody to put them on for three people, you’re gonna have an additional cost. They used to require you to buy them directly, like the stickers from like avery.com or a real print house, which added a lot of cost. Yeah. Now you do. You’re able to print them as 2D barcodes, basically normal barcodes. You can apply it to your product there okay.

Josh Hadley 00:27:48  Fascinating. But insert so you want and if you have a SKU catalogue of 100 SKUs you’re saying like you probably don’t need to roll it out across all of your skews. All right. Do you do this on specific brands only for certain SKUs? Or do you say, hey, I’m doing this for the entire brand because there’s so much going on here.

Chris Lyell 00:28:02  So it depends, right? So if it’s a really high selling product and it’s easy to replicate overseas, like it’s not a patented product, it’s something that people see as a $2, $3 product. You know, you’re going to get knockoffs trying to jump on your listing. I didn’t roll it, but most of the products that we actually do the enrollment on are products that we know are going to go into some sort of retail as well. So I can try to identify where the leaks are coming from. If it’s just Amazon stuff, it just depends. You know, I if we already have it set up in our manufacturing facility and it’s really not that much more expensive, I’d like to know that I never have to worry about somebody jumping on my listing for 15 units. And because one, one big thing that happens when somebody jumps on your listing, like we talked about, it’s not just retailers that get upset if you have somebody under that pricing. Right. Example Prime exclusive discounts. They require your lowest price.

Chris Lyell 00:28:43  And same thing with on on lightning deals and all those things lowest priced in the last 30 days. It’s not lowest price that Chris Chris account pad. It’s the lowest price on that asset. So if you have an overseas seller jump on your listing and go ten bucks under you. Now that is your floor for the next 30 days. If there’s a deal, if there’s something coming up with, you know, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or you just have a deal being rain, it throws everything off and you basically have to cancel those deals because it’s going to be at a place where you can’t actually make a margin. So that’s one of the reasons why we’ve done it, even on some Amazon products, because I just can’t afford to not have time to run a lightning deal and sell 1000 units. And this person screwed me because they sold 15 units. That’s tough to have to deal with.

Josh Hadley 00:29:19  So on that same note, and we were talking about this before we hit record. How do you protect your map pricing, especially if you’re selling into multiple channels, what have you wholesale into Wayfair as an example.

Josh Hadley 00:29:29  Right. And Wayfair runs a sale there pre Prime Day sale the week before. And now your product shows up even less there. How do you protect that.

Chris Lyell 00:29:37  So it’s difficult especially with like Wayfair because you’re selling to them wholesale and you don’t actually I don’t believe at least any of the products that I’ve had that we’re able to actually truly establish, like a hard math, I think on Bed Bath and Beyond or Overstock, they have a hard math that they’ll follow.

Josh Hadley 00:29:49  Okay.

Chris Lyell 00:29:50  but, with Wayfair, I’m not sure what their policy is, but so the way that I know that some people have worked around, I did not do this. Amazon trust me, is to have different pieces because if you have a retail UPC, Amazon’s bots are trying to compare UPC across the board. So if you have something in retail and you have that same UPC attached, your asset on Amazon, you know, let’s just say Walmart, for example, sells a product for 1999. I want to sell mine for 29.99, right? Yeah.

Chris Lyell 00:30:14  I am not going to be able to have the buy box if they connect those two and think it’s the same product, unless I’m at 1999. If I had a different UPC in retail, the UPC will not connect and you should not have the issue. I know that there are some instances where they may look and actually compare the main image photos. Those are different than they have no way to tie the products together, and that should not affect you in regards to map on that. we had an issue with Wayfair. I think I mentioned this before. Literally during Prime Prime Day, they ran some deal, some like hot Summer deal or something like that, and we had a prime exclusive deal tied to a price at like $59, and it ended up having to go down to 51, 21 to be able to even have a buy box to show, even though my discount was going to take me lower than that. Amazon wanted the base price to match, so we had to scrap a deal during Prime Exclusive day because of the Wayfair issue.

Chris Lyell 00:30:57  So also is Wayfair. Is the juice worth the squeeze of the seven sales to potentially have that happen? Yeah, I know people claim Wayfair brings a lot of sales. I have some outdoor products that they sell one season, two days a day. It’s not worth it to me. You know, that’ll never happen again. After that, I’m like, this is done. I thought I knew all these, you know, math tricks. And then I got hit by Wayfair.

Josh Hadley 00:31:16  Okay. Fascinating. So be aware of that. Right. And I think that’s why another strategy too is like just slightly modify your product. If you’re going to go into retail. Right. Have it a different packaging or something that does require it to have a new UPC code. right?

Chris Lyell 00:31:31  And even white to off white. You know, if the product has, you know, something like that and say, well, it’s a different product. UPC code is different because it’s a slightly different color. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be something that is dramatically different.

Chris Lyell 00:31:41  It’s just something you can say, look, these are literally not the same product. You know what I mean?

Josh Hadley 00:31:44  So love it. Chris, this has been amazing. Any other things that we haven’t talked about that you think our sellers need to hear from you?

Chris Lyell 00:31:51  the one thing I would just say is, you know, I’d love to talk to anybody who’s having issues with some sort of infringement or think they might have an issue. You know, I’m easy to get a hold of. I love to pay it forward. I’ll give you a call or at least, you know, some sort of evaluation. I’ll look at the product, and see if there’s something we can do to help you. And we’ll be honest. If you can’t, we can’t. But, don’t just assume it’s this huge undertaking and not enforce the rights. You paid so much in the branding, but, you know, he built. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:32:12  Chris, what’s your best email address if people do want to reach out to you.

Chris Lyell 00:32:16  It’s Chris at AMZ like Amazon AMZ watchdog.com.

Josh Hadley 00:32:21  Okay. I love that. Would highly recommend y’all reach out to Chris if you have some questions like this. And you need help, you know, creating that digital protection mode around your business, or you have some hijackers or you have some people that are infringing on your pen. He’s got lots of experience, as you can see now, Chris, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here’s my three that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something here. So Action item number one is truly to create a digital moat of IP protection around your business. I would argue that most sellers do not have an IP strategy in place, and this can come in many different forms. There’s utility patterns, there’s design patterns, there’s trademarks, and there’s also copyrights. Those are four things that you can truly use in your business to reduce the amount of competition and try to always stay one step ahead. And so I would just make sure that you, you know, that we’ve had Rich Goldstein on the podcast.

Josh Hadley 00:33:13  there’s you. You have a lot of experience working with other brands to how can you creatively utilize IP to prevent other people from competing in the same exact area and stealing your sales action? Item number two is going to be focused on, you know, getting into retail. And I love the strategies that you shared here where you need to, you know, utilize a broker. it sounds like that that’s they’re kind of the gatekeeper, right? And it’s kind of who, you know, not what, you know. so make sure you’re working with the right people and the right contacts can help you get you in there. And you’re saying that the juice is worth the squeeze. However, leading into, action item number three is make sure that when you go into retail or open up wholesale channels, you should come into this with a very good IP protection strategy of how are you going to identify if somebody now jumps on your Amazon listing because you sold them a discounted product and they’re okay with a 5% margin, and they start eating up some of your sales on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:34:03  So make sure you have a strategy and a moat around that. And as Chris shared, he gave us some very good action items there with the transparency program that you can enroll into, making sure that that product maybe is slightly different. Maybe the white color just becomes a different shade of white to make it a different product. And when you do that, you can create that moat and still protect your main sales channel from, you know, as you try to expand. Don’t let getting on Wayfair and getting seven sales a month on Wayfair take away from the 7000 units you sell per month on Amazon. Chris, is there anything else that you would add to this as an action item?

Chris Lyell 00:34:36  I don’t think I could have summed it up better, so I think that’s great.

Josh Hadley 00:34:39  Awesome. All right, Chris, my favorite time here ask you the three questions I love to ask each guest. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Chris Lyell 00:34:47  okay. So there’s a book called Tools of Titans written by Tim Ferriss.

Chris Lyell 00:34:50  So actually he also has four hour workweek, which is how I got into Amazon following his model of trying to work only four hours a week. That is originally how it was, and now it’s turned into 40 hour workweek. But that’s okay. but Tools of Titans. There’s 200 interviews with like, different, successful health experts, entrepreneurs, tech people, just people that have had a lot of success in life. And they’re small, like, you know, 2 to 7 pages. snippets where Tim Ferriss interviews and asks them some of those, like real actionable items on how to be better at whatever it is. There’s a ton of different sections I’ve read through that whole thing. It is an amazing book with so much information that is actionable and can help you be a better, you know, entrepreneur, a better Amazon seller, a better person health wise, all that. So I definitely recommend that book. Tools of Titans.

Josh Hadley 00:35:26  Tools of Titans, that’s a new one, but I have got that on my list now.

Josh Hadley 00:35:29  That one sounds really exciting. Chris, what is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using that you think other people need to be utilizing?

Chris Lyell 00:35:36  so I’ve been using one called, I think it’s called open AI. and there’s also ChatGPT. I mean, ChatGPT is incredible. if you actually are using it, I’ve had logos made with it. like logos that are being used right now. But anyone who does real estate, all of his merch has a logo I made for him on ChatGPT in five minutes. I’ve written legal agreements with it. and things like that. So it’s pretty incredible and powerful. you know, just make sure, you know, it’s, it’s being used on the legal side. You may want to check with an attorney, so luckily we have some in-house, but, it’s an amazing tool for writing emails, you know, responding properly to suppliers, things like that that, you know, just don’t necessarily do every day. It can do it for you in a very professional manner.

Josh Hadley 00:36:12  Love that, love that. All right, Chris, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Chris Lyell 00:36:19  Okay, I have two people for this. one of them we met, Kevin King. He is. He’s got more knowledge in this space than anybody I’ve ever met. he’s always got hacks. He’s got the connections. He’s just an amazing person that I would definitely follow. Go to some of his events, check them out. Kevin King, billion dollar seller summit. I’ve been to every one of them. Except for one, I think. the other person that I work with and talk with and follow very closely is Brandon Young. he’s an incredible teacher, and he’s not just a person who sells courses. A person who’s actually successful and is selling today. and he’s growing faster than I’ve ever seen in the Amazon space. He’s recently helped me. I thought I knew absolutely everything about Amazon. He recently helped me with something that I need some help with.

Chris Lyell 00:36:55  He’s a great teacher. I highly recommend you check out, Stellar Systems and Data Dive, which are his to, his course and his software. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:37:04  Highly recommend Brandon Young. He’s a good friend, as well. And, he is the only, course that I recommend people follow in the Amazon space at this point in time. So with that being said, Chris, if other people want to follow you, they want to learn more. Where could they follow you up?

Chris Lyell 00:37:18  Facebook or Instagram? My name Chris Lyell. and you can go to our website and Z watchdog. Com and check out some of the services we offer. And if you need anything obviously reach out. Like I said, I’m very, very easy to get Ahold of and love to pay it forward. If anybody needs help or just some quick advice.

Josh Hadley 00:37:31  Love it. Thanks again for your time today, Chris.

Chris Lyell 00:37:33  Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.