Lately, every new update, feature, or creative tool Amazon launches is exclusively for brand registered sellers. This clearly shows Amazon’s obsession with “creating brands customers can trust.” The latest tool was rolled out on April 29, 2021, and is called the Amazon Brand Catalog Manager. By providing crucial information like a list of resellers selling products from your brand, average customer ratings of your product and projected sales opportunity for the next 12 months, this tool helps brands make an informed purchase decision.
Keep on reading to know everything about the Amazon Brand Catalog Manager tool, where you can find it in your Seller Central, the benefits, drawbacks and FAQs.
What is Amazon Brand Catalog Manager
The Brand Catalog Manager tool lists all the products from your brand, regardless of the seller. It gives easy visibility into who is selling your products, what kind of experience customers are having and what is the projected sales opportunity for products without a Brand-direct offer. Brand owners can use this information to review all sellers that are selling products from their Brand and ensure that their shoppers get a consistently pleasant shopping experience.
The Brand Catalog Manager dashboard lists out the following information:
- Retail Offer: A yes/no value showing whether you are currently sourcing the product via a Vendor relationship.
- Brand Offer: A yes/no value showing whether you are currently offering the product via Amazon on Seller Central.
- Current Featured Offer: Shows the sellers that are currently featured on the Product Detail Page in the Buy Box.
- Additional seller Count: Shows how many other sellers are currently listing the product. Clicking the hyperlink will show a breakout of sellers.
- Average Customer Rating: The average Customer rating as it appears on the detail page.
- Potential Opportunity: Amazon anticipates product sales over 12 months. The numbers are calculated based on past performance.
- Next Steps: Allows you to add an offer (only if it does not exist) and to active any inactive offers.
What are the eligibility criteria?
This tool is available to all sellers having a brand registry. You must be a:
- A brand owner
- Internal to the brand
- Responsible for selling the products listed in your brand
Where to find the Brand Catalog Manager dashboard?
If you are a brand registered seller, you will find the Brand Catalog Manager in the “Brands” tab in the top navigation.
Troubleshooting: If you are a brand registered seller and still can see the dashboard, contact support in reference to “error code 5001a” and provide them the name of your brand.
Brand owners can also share secondary access to their Amazon seller consulting expert managing their account.
FAQs from brand owners
How can Product Variants be handled?
If a product has a variation (ex: a clothing item that comes in various colors/sizes), the product will be listed in a single row in the table. A total of active offers will appear for the variational total, with missing and inactive offers broken out below the total.
How is Potential Opportunity Calculated?
The Potential Opportunity is derived based on the past performance of multiple similar products. Please note that the value does not clarify future sales but helps you identify which products are popular with your shoppers.
How often are the numbers updated?
The metrics are calculated and updated once a day. It may take up to 48 hours for changes to be reflected on the page.
Benefits of the Brand Catalog Manager tool
- Brand owners can easily view all products from their catalog being sold on Amazon store by any seller. This way, they can keep a close watch on resellers and distributors selling their branded products.
- Average customer rating column makes it easy for you to spot the products that need attention. Poor customer ratings can be because of shipping defects or less or vague information on the detail page. Brands can remedy this issue by hiring Amazon listing optimization service.
- The Potential Opportunity column helps prioritize products that brand owners would want to offer directly to the customers and gain maximum benefits.
- For easy navigation, there are Brand and Category filters. These filters are especially useful for sellers with multiple brands or a large catalog of products.
- Click on Add Offer to create your listing and sell the product directly.
- If a product is inactive or out of stock, simply click on Activate Offer to manage inventory and make the product available to the customers.
What can be improved?
Although the tool provides a comprehensive list of all the products of your brand along with the crucial information, it does have its drawbacks. For starters, the “View Sellers” link takes you to the product page and opens the side panel showing all the offerings. Instead, it should return a list of the sellers and conditions of their offer along with links to their stores.
Brand owners also pointed out in the Seller Forum that Additional Seller Count should have excluded duplicates. For example, the seller might be the same seller duplicated because they’re selling both FBM and FBA. This issue can make things tedious for brands with a large number of resellers selling their products or brands with a large catalog containing hundreds or thousands of SKUs.
So….is this tool worth a try?
Yes, of course. It helps streamline your inventory and product management while the important inside data like “Potential Opportunity” ensure that you make an informed decision. Although there are many other tools in Seller Central to keep track of sales, inventory and performance, the Brand Catalog Manager makes it easy for brands to view all of that in one convenient dashboard. The tool also gives brand owners more control over their brand and helps them make sure that their brand isn’t poorly represented.
Final thoughts: Getting your brand registered is a no-brainer
The Brand Catalog Manager is just one of the many tools Amazon offers to sellers having a brand Registry. It unlocks the Brand Dashboard and tools like the Brand Catalog Manager, Amazon Storefront, Enhanced Brand Content, Sponsored Brand Ads, Posts and Video Ads that can help you get an edge over your competitors.
To know more about Amazon Brand Registry and its benefits, read our blog post: Amazon Brand Registry – 2021 Guide.
To get your brand registered on Amazon, contact us and schedule a meeting with our Amazon consultants.