Latest / Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast / Creating a Business Name & Copyrights

Transcript

Creating a Business Name & Copyrights · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, this is the Selling on Giants e-commerce marketplace show, where we chat with experts in the e-commerce industry and talk about the latest insights, strategies, and best practices they need to succeed on major e-commerce marketplaces.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Victor Dwyer, and our guest today is Marvel Randles, a seasoned attorney with over 30 years of experience specializing in business, organizational, commercial, and contract issues.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive into creating a business name and copyrights, Marvin, please give us a little intro about yourself and what you're currently working on.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I am an attorney that took kind of the long path to get there.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was a paralegal for a number of years before I became an attorney.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And once I became an attorney, I thought that I would do personal injury and, you know, help people with car accidents and slip and falls.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And as it turned out, uh the jobs that I had been working, I worked with a corporate firm for 11 years that did a lot of corporate litigation.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I decided to go out on my own and open up my own practice and partnered with in-house counsel to do legal work for small to medium-sized businesses or Amazon resellers, those types of people that needed the assistance of an attorney and couldn't necessarily afford to pay$500 an hour to do it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we started up the business and it's been going very well.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we've helped a lot of people so far.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a good thing.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I always believe in karma.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: What you put out in the world, you get yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're really going to like focus this podcast on being able to apply Amazon and like legal names and trademarks and things like that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And let's start out by saying, like, hey, how do you name your company without creating the confusion with another brand?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a very important thing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I always say what you want to do is you want to start from the beginning and do it right because things are so much harder to fix on the back end.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Once the mistake has been made, it's almost impossible.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to go back and rebrand, which then costs you a lot of time, effort, some of your reviews, your placement.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to do that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what we it we try to advise our clients is when you're thinking about a business name, it's always fun to come up with some, you know, like how do you do dot com or something, but that doesn't necessarily describe your product.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: What you want to do is make sure that your business name describes your product.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: The customer needs to be able to know what you're selling when they see your business name.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you want to know what the purpose of your name is.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is it's it's the whole purpose of your name is for brand recognition and brand development.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Coming up with a really good business name can make all the difference in getting your business off the ground.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you do that in the beginning, you're not gonna have to mess with it on the back end.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that you need to be careful of when you're naming your business is oftentimes you think you've come up with the most novel name in the world.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody else already has that name.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I would advise everybody to take the time to go onto the web, do searches, and we could always help people with that if they need it, but to do searches to see if anybody else is using that name, a similar name, or something that would mislead a client.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's not even the same product, it's an entirely different product, but the name is so close to yours that it's gonna confuse people.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if somebody's searching for you know products in a health supplement market, they don't want to go look at you know balding hair things that are gonna, you know, help you to grow your hair back.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you need to be a little specific and make sure that people understand what it is you're selling.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to name their business after themselves, and you know, a name like mine, that's really easy because there's materials out there, but what I'm selling is me.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that works for me.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily gonna work for a product.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're selling shower speakers, it needs to be in the name somewhere or in some form, you know.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so if you don't do a search though, you could run into issues where down the road you've got your business up and running and it's doing really well, and all of a sudden somebody takes you down because you've used their name.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So and uh when we last talked, we talked about clean the energy drink, and I'm just gonna share my screen here.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, if you take a look here, like this is clean energy drink, they actually named themselves clean energy drink.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's literally what that they named themselves.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: So when people are typing in clean energy drinks, they're actually going to name themselves that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, Marvin, can you please give us a little guide on how would a company go and approach this to make it where okay?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say they can take tackle these really general search terms like this.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are looking to make sure somebody else doesn't have your name, then this is great to just do a search in Amazon.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: However, one of the things you want to do is you can go to the USTP, United States Trade and Patent Office.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's USP T O dot org.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And remember that dot org because the bottom line is that if you type in just United States Trade and Patent Office, you're not gonna be able to, it's gonna be some fake website.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: But the website that you just typed in, it has a search for trademark thing there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can actually go and search and see if somebody else is using that name.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: It may really, really bum you out that somebody beat you to the punch, but I can almost guarantee you if you type it in, you're gonna find clean K-L-E-E-N energy drinks as well.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's an option, is that you can play on words as long as you don't use C L E A N energy drinks.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when you're doing your search terms on your setting up your store on Amazon and setting in your search terms, you can always use the term clean.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You may not come up first, but it will be one of the search terms.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't use clean energy drinks as the name of your product, it's already taken.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you always want to be careful that you don't do that because, like we discussed before, what will happen is you'll get to sell your product and nobody will say a word until you're really successful.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you're successful, the clean energy drinks is gonna say, Hey, somebody is uh selling a lot of products and cutting into our business.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: We need to take them down.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's when they're gonna take you down, and that's when it hurts because you spend all that time building up your business and getting your brand recognized and getting to the point where you have maybe subscription customers, you're gonna lose all that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So make be very careful in the initial setup stage and make sure that you name your business appropriate.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you you talked about doing an Amazon search and then doing a trademark search.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any other searches that people should be looking at before naming their company or naming their brand?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now keep in mind that as we discussed, brand name and company name are two entirely different things.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're setting up your company, there's a whole range of things you have to consider.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: What type of company do you want?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a sole proprietor?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a partnership?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna set up a corporation?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So all those things come into play.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I would advise anyone, at least in the beginning, get an attorney.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't have one, it's so easy to do online and everybody's like, oh, this, I don't need an attorney for this.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you don't.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But again, if you make that mistake, it's gonna be very costly.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And to get an attorney to help you set it up, it's nominal costs, it does not cost that much.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Once you've determined the company you want, you might name that company Victor Dwyer Inc., which is perfectly fine.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's gonna be DBA doing business as clean energy drinks.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're setting up your store, it's clean energy drinks, but it's owned by Victor Dwyer L Inc Incorporated.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're going in and you're actually looking to name your company or name your product, you can most states in Florida, it's sunbizunb-i-z dot org.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can find out the website, just type in corporate information for whatever state you have, and it'll give you the website.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Again, make sure it ends in org because if it doesn't, you're probably going to a fake website.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they will direct you how to search.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you could search your name, Victor Dwyer Incorporated.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: There might already be one.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna have to, you know, Victor Dwyer too or something else, you know.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then in that search, you're you're gonna find another section on most of those pages that says fictitious names.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: The fictitious name is the product name, it's what you're selling.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, and if you register both your corporation and your fictitious name, it protects you within that state.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So no one else can take that name.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you really should do that before you ever sell a single item.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you do go online and start selling, you haven't set up a corporation, you haven't set up a fictitious name, and you're just, you know, going on testing the market, seeing what it's like out there.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: But now somebody else notices that there's clean energy drinks, and what a great name.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's not registered.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get that name.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now they can shut you down, even though it was your idea.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure that you have all of those quote unquote ducts in a row before you ever, ever go online and sell that first product.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, for example, that clean energy drinks already exist.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was a brand that wanted to copy that, what protects them from doing that?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I obviously I can't I can I make my doing business, my DBA basically as doing business as um clean energy drinks still and not be copyrighted in that state.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but like what happens as a nationwide level.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's a really good story about that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was a uh little mom and pop burger shop in Springfield, Ohio, and the name of it was Burger King.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when Burger King started franchising and getting bigger, they opened up a Burger King in Springfield, Ohio, and mom and pop shut them down.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: They were not allowed to use the name until they paid mom and pop for the use of that name because they had it registered in the state of Ohio.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you you always want to be careful because even though you believe that you've got a unique name, it may not be unique.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the best way to do it for state protection, if you don't plan on selling anything out of your state, you're gonna have a brick and mortar store or you're just gonna sell online locally, you don't have to worry about doing anything other than state stuff.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're gonna sell on the web, on Amazon, or if you're gonna go Google or someplace like that and sell, you want to make sure and trademark that name.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I clean energy drinks, for instance.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can copyright it and you can trademark it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's it's a difference of opinion and everybody has their own style of doing it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, I like for people to come up with a logo and then a copy of their web page that so shows that that logo is being used in commerce.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can go to the United States Trade and Patent Office and you can trademark that logo, and that gives you protection for that name, period.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody else can use clean energy drinks in that combination of a logo.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: They can use clean, they can use energy, they can use drinks, but not together because together they represent a trademark that has been protected.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I advise everybody to do that.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you can go to ustpo.org all on your own.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to cost you between 200 and 250 and$500.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your documents have to be in JPEG for form.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: They can't be, they won't accept anything else.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there are certain requirements as to the size of the logos and stuff like that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you can, it is possible to go on and do it yourself.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I would advise you to get somebody else to do it for you, to get an attorney to do it for you.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because there's a lot of steps to it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have to select what type of product you're selling, you have to, and it can get a little bit crazy if you do it yourself.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you make one mistake, they're gonna send you an email and say you have 90 days to correct it, and you're gonna look at it and go, I don't know what I did wrong.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna call in an attorney, and then the attorney is gonna say, Well, now it's an hourly fee, and it's gonna cost you a lot more money than if you'd have just let us do it to begin with.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um not trying to push hiring attorneys.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying the cost in the beginning to have things done correctly is a whole lot less than the cost if you have to have it fixed at the end.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing that nobody wants to do, nobody that is selling a product and has is, I mean, entrepreneurs work so hard at what they do.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: People do not understand that you know, to get a brand to market takes a whole lot of background stuff to do.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So of all of that stuff that you're doing and finding a supplier and getting your product made and getting it shipped and getting a warehouse and all of that stuff is way harder than getting an attorney to take a few simple steps in the beginning to make sure you're protected.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't want to do all that and have done all that work and you're proud of your brand, and then somebody comes in and says, Guess what?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm taking you down because I showed Amazon I own the patent, I own the trademark, I own the copyright.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: So do it in the beginning and you won't have to mess with it at the end.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I completely agree.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you describe your product without using terms that may create brand issues with other brands?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, the best thing you have to do right off the beginning is you need to do those searches.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do a thorough search of all state records, trademark records, of even go on Amazon like you did, and type in the product.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are other websites that you can go to as well that will allow you to search because, as you know, on Amazon, there's a whole bunch of search terms in everybody's product that you use single words to search for, like clean or energy or drink or cans or whatever the case may be, you know.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to do that that due diligence in the very beginning and ensure that you have a product type that is I've seen just a so close.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's if you are going to name a product um healthy, h-e-a-l-t-h-y, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But somebody's already using Hitbrand, so you name it H-E-A-L-T-H-I, you're gonna have a problem.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: You are gonna have a problem.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Your better bet is to add another name to it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So call it, you know, Tom's healthy, whatever product, and then you've got a little bit something different, but it's particularly if you have a brand um like uh clean energy, okay, yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: The toenail shavers, right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like and you know, it's Tony's toenail shavers.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's unlikely there's gonna be something else like that out there, but if you just have toenail clippers, yeah, there's probably gonna be a ton of them, you know.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important to come up with that name.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've found with most of our clients, they've come up with very unique and very distinct names right from the beginning, which is awesome.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: You do the the searches, you make sure that name's not taken, and then you get everything done beforehand so that nobody else can take that name away from you.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I completely agree with that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then my third question is can search terms create potential action by other brands that may result in your brand being taken down by another brand?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um, if you have clean energy drinks, right, and you decide to call yours uh clean pep drinks or something along that line, it's really, really close, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: You could go, let's just say you call it clean energy drinks, you know, and you go on and you sell that product online.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, the problem, if they took it down right away, everybody would probably be like, oh, boopsie, and go ahead and fix it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: But as you know, people that sell on Amazon, one of the things that you do is you build up a reputation and you build up those reviews and those move you up the ladder so that when people go searching for you, you come up a little higher than the other guy.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of key to it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as you start climbing that ladder and you get more and more products sold, somebody's gonna notice because they probably didn't pay attention to you when you were selling 10, you know, 10 drinks a week.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're selling a, you know, 2,000 drinks a week, now they're gonna pay attention and they're gonna come after you.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens is they're gonna go to Amazon and they're gonna do a takedown request.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what that is, is that's them saying to Amazon, hey, somebody else is using our brand name, they're gonna show Amazon that they own the brand name, Amazon's gonna agree with them, and now you're taken down.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you can fight that, but sometimes it doesn't work.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Even when with Amazon, even when you have glitches with Amazon that aren't because your name was bad, aren't because your product was, you know, a resell, or you know, any problems that you know, the multi-pax or something that Amazon has product uh problems with, sometimes even when you're not doing anything wrong, Amazon glitches.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then to get that fixed, you really have to, it's I call that climbing a ladder too, because you start out with Amazon, your seller central account, which will get you nowhere.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go to your brand registry, which will also get you nowhere, and then you have to go to Amazon Legal.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have every single bit of information, the trademark information, the business information, you know, your merchant account token number, all of those things.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have all the ASINs and you don't have everything you need, they won't even pay any attention to your letter.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: They'll just throw it in file number three and you'll never hear anything.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: But even once you get to that point, then they legal will give you a complaint number, which a claim number, which will then go back down to the reseller, to the seller central, and they're gonna send you over to brand central, and that's usually where you can get it fixed.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: But that can take months.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're selling products and you have employees that work in warehouses and you need an income, months of fixing something like that, it's particularly if you only have a few products, it could put you out of business.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't want to go that way.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: You want to fix everything and have it nice and tight right in the beginning.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So are you an online seller struggling to navigate the complexities of marketplace management?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let Bellovix help.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our dedicated team of professionals are passionate, innovative, and committed to excellence to growing your brand on marketplaces.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: With Bellavix, you can trust your brand will receive personalized support and expertise that will help you stand out from the competition.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that every brand is unique, which is why we tailor our approach to fit your specific needs.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready to take the brand to the next level in marketplaces, contact Bellivix today.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let us help you achieve your goals to grow your brand.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about Amazon suspensions for a second.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any good strategies to getting unsuspended faster on Amazon?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that's a terrible thing to say, but no, there aren't.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have had situations where we have provided Amazon with all the information and it was up within two days.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: I provided them with all the information, and two months later, we're still fighting.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It it is we had one situation where a competitor had done a takedown, the competitor rescinded the takedown.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon had all of the information, and it took six months to get the original seller back up and running.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is no rhyme or reason to Amazon, and unfortunately, speaking to a live person at Amazon is nearly impossible.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to do everything via email, and everything has to be done with all of the information available to you so that you can prove your case basically to them.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there are certain situations, um, and I won't go into all of them, but there are certain situations on Amazon where if you've done something that Amazon does not approve of and they take you down, and you know, we'll just tell people right up front, you're you're not going to get this back up.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: They won't do it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain things that they kind of dig their heels in and just say, no, you know, if you need FDA, yeah, if you need FDA approval for a product and they deem that you don't have that certain approval that you need, even though the FDA says, I don't need to have approval from the FDA for this product, Amazon will not reinstate that store.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's there are some things that are really difficult.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Other things, like I said, some things in the best of worlds, you you get all of the information together because Amazon has a little checklist.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if you check all those boxes, sometimes you can get it right back up.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it is a difficult situation with them because and they don't quite frankly, they don't care about us because the bottom line is they have so many people that one brand is not gonna hurt them.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we're the ones that have to beg and bleed to get through their system.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, unfortunately, that's right.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right why it's so important to make sure that you have everything done as best you can to prevent any of that.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know people that have been selling on Amazon for you know 13, 14 years, maybe longer, never had a problem, you know.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I've known people that have been selling on Amazon that long, got their product patented.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: The patent has to be renewed every 10 years.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So does Amazon, right?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: So they did everything right through the patent office, got their patent re-registered, everything's all good, went to Amazon.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon said, Oh, competing patent, took them down for their own patent.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's so bad.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's like, yeah, you I that's why I said there's really no rhyme or reason.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, I I tell people it's and I'm certainly not disparaging anyone that that works at Amazon, but you know, there is a hierarchy, and and when you go to you know, um, to sell central, it's like a call center.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then brand registry is a little step up from that, and then when you get to legal, it's a little step up from that.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to get a personal phone number for Jeff Bezos, so that I can just call him.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hey buddy, how you doing?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can you fix this for me?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Can you upload this product page for me real quick?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you know, I'm having a little bit.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of problems with my product that you know sells one millionth of what you're worth.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wanted to go into kind of how to speak Amazon, uh, speak Amazonian for a second.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: When your product gets suspended and you don't know what to do, there's kind of like this level of Amazon language that you have to speak.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And can you go into like how you position your messaging to address concern that Amazon has?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: They shut you down and you you respond.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do you speak to them to get unsuspended the fastest?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, and I had to learn this all the hard way through trial and error, unfortunately.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I have a uh letter that has like all of the check boxes basically that need to be checked.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because like a lot of times, if you're selling a product, for instance, okay, and it's a single product, well, one box of widgets, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you also can offer the client or the customer a three-pack box of widgets.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's three boxes of widgets and it's under a different ASIN number, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: That ASIN number is gonna have the parent number is gonna be that single one.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then the product may have its own ASIN for many products, so it may have a parent number.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't give them all of that information, you're like, well, this is the only ASIN that's taken down, they're not gonna connect it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then so you're gonna have more problems.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: You literally have to, if if you would think about going to Amazon and what is the quickest way to give them all of the information that they need, literally give them all the information.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Give them your name, give them the product name, give them the company name, give them the agents, give them your merchant token number, give them the I mean, it literally you have to do everything.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to specifically describe your problem.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: What is your issue?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was taken down by a competitor who has rescinded the complaint, and here's the complaint number, and here's the I mean, you you if you don't give them everything, they won't tie it together, and unfortunately, they will not write back to you and say, Well, if you give us that complaint number, we'll look at it to address it for you.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: They just will not respond, which means that you're sitting there waiting for a response that's never gonna come.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I have found uh some success in you know following following up after a period of time.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you've waited two weeks and you don't have a response, you need to be following up with them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, how often do you follow up if your account gets suspended?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do you follow up once a day, every 48 hours?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: How how often if I were somebody, I would give it five days and then respond.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: But there's another little tricky wicket in there, and that is that if you so your complaint goes in, right?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes to Betty sitting at desk A, right?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she's looking at it.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And five days later, you send a follow-up email and you say, Hey, Amazon, I haven't heard back about this, you know, this issue that I had, blah da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: That I told you guys about.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now it's going to Tom at desk B.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So Betty's now opened up a case number over here, complaint number, and Tom over here has now opened up a second complaint number.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're in a world of hurt because now you're gonna have to clear both of those before you could do it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you ever follow up, attach your previous email, make sure that it's with it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you just write a new one, you're gonna go to somebody else, and then you're gonna have additional issues to deal with.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So always make sure that you just have a running, tell the story.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So this is my issue, this is this is all my information, and this is my issue, and this is how when it started, and this is you know, everything.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tell that story.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Then once you've told that story and you're following up, attach it and retell it.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Say this was the problem I had.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've got this this email attached that I wrote to you guys, and then uh, and what I said was yada yada yada.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you tell them, please refer to the attached email, guess what will happen?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing, they're not gonna refer to the attached email.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you literally I I always copy and paste it right back in.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I attach the original email so that I could show it was sent, but I copy and paste all that same information right back in again so that they see it's gone before.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and I'm like Amazon, it's unfortunately um it's just one of those areas where there's really no settled law on it.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a lot of times it's more technical than it is legal.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know somebody that has had an Amazon store for many years, I guarantee you they've probably had a problem at some time.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's your resource.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Go to them.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be companies out there and attorneys out there and people that'll say, you know, hey, we can fix this, you know.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you have to get an attorney involved.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the best thing to do if you've gone through the steps and you're not getting any response is get an attorney on board so that they can write the legal letter and get it out there on lawyer letterhead, which does get their attention a little bit more.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: But oftentimes it's a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of somebody that's been doing it for a long time knowing, yeah, this is what you gotta do.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Push this button, pull this lever, and bing, bang, boom, there you go, you know.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So and it and it's it's you know, uh Belavix has a great uh group of people that actually work to help people with their problems on Amazon.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that resource should just definitely be out there for people.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and I wanted to ask you, what are some of the biggest issues that Amazon sellers face?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you normally see them do wrong, either when it comes down to any legal things on Amazon?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: It could be about trademarks, brand names, it could be about suspensions.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are Amazon sellers usually doing wrong right now when it comes to legal stuff?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's two sets of Amazon sellers that when you talk about wrongs out there, okay.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's the first set that's the guy that started his brand and he's built it up and he's trying to do the best he can and you know, inadvertently used a wrong name, or he inadvertently stepped on somebody else's toes.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those kind of things, it's it really is day-to-day.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: There are people that go through that sell for years and never have a problem.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Their biggest problem for the last few years has been the supply chain.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been Amazon.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, and the supply chain has been a nightmare.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, but the other set of people are the people that are either resellers or people that are purposely trying to overtake a brand.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if someone is unaware that they have to renew a registration or that they have to renew a trademark, those people are sitting there waiting and they notice it.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that I don't know, they probably have a computer program that dings, and as soon as it does, they're gonna stomp on your brand and try and take it away from you because they're gonna do a new brand and try to take yours down, and it has happened.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I tell people, you know, although uh dealing with Amazon and the glitches that Amazon has and the issues that Amazon has are a big part of doing business.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: The real issue is making sure that you have all of your legal documents and legal the needs that you have for the actual company taken care of prior to ever selling that first item.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you do that, more than likely you'll be one of those people that can sell for years and never have an issue.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So and is there anything else that has been top of mind for you that you've been seeing a lot lately or anything that else that you've been wanting to communicate?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, you know, there is something out there that I think people need to be aware of.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not particularly for people that are inventing a product, a new product, and branding it and putting it out there on the market.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's for people that want to make money on Amazon and they don't necessarily have a product in mind or they have a product that they're gonna resell or something.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: There are a number of companies out there right now that are making promises to people that we're gonna establish a store for you, we're gonna get your brand all established, you will be doing X amount of dollars per month, X amount of dollars per year, and all you have to do is pay us$30,000 up front.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do not do this because the companies are only operating for like six months to a year.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna go on with a company like that, please, please, please be very, very careful and do your due diligence to make sure that that company is a reputable company because people do it, they get the money, then they close down, and then trying to get the money back out of them, which I've got several cases right now doing that.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've been successful, but it's it is definitely a difficult thing to do because most of the time the money is spent.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're literally getting money from you know that doesn't have it at this point, you know.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So please be careful out there right now because there it's it's a I've only seen this in the last couple of years.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there are reputable companies out there that can assist you in building your brand and getting your your products online to sell and getting your store where it's doing great, but be very careful if somebody wants a ton of money up front to do that for you, don't do it until you check it out.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because most likely you're just gonna lose your money.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen so many people that have lost their entire savings, you know, thinking I invested everything and I'm gonna be rich.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and now they're getting a thousand dollars a month for the next, you know, 14 months until they get some of their some of their money back.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: So please be careful out there, guys.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Be very careful.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank yeah, that's that's insane.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, unfortunately, that's all we have time for today.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, Marvin, please tell the audience how to find you, um, get in contact with you, and find more information.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my name is Marvin Randles.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can contact us at uh either one of three ways via phone at uh 689-249-4460, or you can contact Dahlia.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's D-A-H-L-I-H, D-A-L I A H.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Dahlia at councilinhouse.com.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Marvin, for coming on.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you everyone for listening to the Selling on Giants podcast.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: We will catch you next time.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Take care, bye-bye.