Selling Beauty Products on Amazon
Listing your commodities online can be a lucrative business with the right amount of traction. Amazon provides this; hence, the rush to enlist. Essentially, beauty products are considered by Amazon to be under the gated category.
For a vendor to be allowed to sell them, they must be ungated, and this might take a while.
The journey to approving beauty products for sale on amazon may take turns, especially if you don’t know your way around it.
This article seeks to amend that by suggesting a few credible must-follow steps to guarantee a quick, straightforward, and seamless process toward getting approved to sell your beauty products on Amazon.
We’ll look at unlocking and selling Amazon beauty products.
How Amazon Categorizes Beauty Products on Its Ecommerce Platform
Generally, most people mistake beauty products for cosmetics. It’s not such a wild mistake since they are used interchangeably anyway. However, cosmetics are categorized under beauty products on Amazon. Other subcategories under the beauty and personal care products include; makeup, skincare, fragrances, luxury beauty, salon and spa, oral care, tools and brushes, hair care, men’s grooming, and professional skin care.
Categorizing products on the platform generally helps both the vendors and buyers to navigate the store with ease and save time. Besides, this can be an essential marketing strategy such that a potential buyer may end up picking an auxiliary item they had not planned for to augment what they intended to buy.
What Are the Requirements for Offering Beauty Products on Amazon?
With rampant cases of fraud and scamming online, you wouldn’t blame Amazon for imposing some strict guidelines on vendors who want to sell products on their platform. Besides, if rules would protect brands from getting indicted for negligence, then they would gladly enforce them. Of course, there are many reasons why the company would be strict with guidelines and restrictions, and we are just here to tell you what rules they are. Therefore, for you to sell on Amazon, you must fulfill the following;
- List and deliver only new and unused beauty products.
- The products must be sealed and, definitely in the manufacturer’s original packaging.
- The beauty products on display must indicate identifying codes from the manufacturer or distributor such as serial numbers, matrix codes, and lot numbers on the packaging.
- The product description must have the following information;
a) Name of the Product;
b) Purpose of this product or what it is used for;
c) Content calibration, i.e., its weight, count, measure, or the amount of contents or ingredients,
d) The ingredient list of the elements used in production;
e) The original manufacturer’s name, contact, and physical address; and
f) Any necessary label warnings such as inflammable! - The cosmetic labels should NOT state or assure a medical certainty that the product can cure, treat, heal, prevent, or mitigate a condition or disease unless approved specifically by the FDA.
- You should not allege on the pages that the product is FDA approved or use an FDA logo if it was not approved by the FDA.
- Amazon expressly prohibits some beauty products such as cosmetic and corrective contact lenses, Latisse, and Obagi Nu-Derm products like Sunfader, Clear, Blender, etc.
Best Practices for Getting an Approval to Sell Beauty Products on Amazon
Meet Base Criteria
Observe that you meet the following criteria before you tender in your application to be considered for approval:
1. Become a Pro-Merchant;
2. Your Order Defect Rate must be below 1%.
3. Have a Pre-Fulfillment Cancel Rate score of less than 2.5%.
4. An order Late Shipment Rate of above 4%
8 Tips To Maximize Your Approval to Sell Amazon Beauty Products
The following seven points are additional tips to consider while on the journey to getting your store business approved by Amazon.
Tip 1 – Prove your legitimacy to Amazon. Here, you want to show amazon that your business is legitimate by providing at least three commercial invoices. Ensure that if you deal in sellable quantities, each category must show that you had a sellable amount of more than 10.
Tip 2 – For a new seller, Amazon will need you to provide them with your established free eCommerce platform for auditing to approve. Therefore, it would be best to start selling in ungated classes to get sufficient history and credibility. Otherwise, you will not get approval unless Amazon is satisfied with your history of selling on the platform.
Tip 3 – For the application, consider only sources for products within the United States. Your chances of approval are enhanced when you use locally manufactured products in your category ungating application compared to using internationally sourced products.
Tip 4 – Consider using branded products that are already in stores on Amazon to apply for your category or subcategory ungating application. This makes the process seamless.
Tip 5 – Present more recent invoices for application. The later they are than the last 90 days the better.
Tip 6 – Submit a copy of your actual commercial invoice (complete with company name, date, address, website, and contact) that came with the order with your application. Also, write ASIN next to each item in your submissions. Do not submit digital invoices.
Tip 7 – Ensure the information you give in the application is accurate with no discrepancies with the one listed in your Amazon Seller Central account.
Tip 8 – There is another section where your beauty products may qualify. It is really important to check out this article on luxury beauty, but specifically luxury beauty seller central. You might find another avenue to explore.
What Are the Benefits of Selling Beauty Products on Amazon?
Amazon is a global online store that attracts millions of people every day. Given that beauty products have gained substantial popularity in the recent past, any vendor involved in the two stands to gain considerably. Furthermore, it is always profitable to bask and take advantage of the marketing strategies and advertisements done by the product manufacturers. Therefore, beauty products that are well promoted tend to attract better sales.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there any region-specific requirements to sell beauty products on amazon?
Amazon does not have any major region-specific instructions or requirements to sell on the platform. However, in addition to the requirements stipulated above, a vendor who wishes to sell in California and New York must ensure that deodorants, antiperspirants, and hairsprays do not contain toxic air pollutants. Also, approval is given by country, so just being ungated in one country does not mean you can to sell to customers in other countries.
What ingredients are prohibited in beauty products?
You are prohibited from selling or distributing products made from compounds derived from large aquatic animals such as sharks, whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
What is meant by gated products?
Goods are classified as gated if they require approval before selling. Amazon may perform additional checks on their performance, impose more requirements, or demand extra fees. This move to gate products is an effort to protect both vendors and buyers from scammers, fraudulent transactions, and probable lawsuits that may arise as a result.
Conclusion on Unlocking and Selling Amazon Beauty Products and Categories
Every vendor wants the best possible traction to their store. While Amazon is in a position to offer this, the company must ensure the safety of its customers.
This is why for commodities such as beauty products, which if carelessly handled can cause damage to the users, Amazon has applied strict rules that must be adhered to in a bid to be approved to sell on the platform.
That’s why it is important to understand the process of unlocking and then selling Amazon beauty products.
Also, beauty products are classified as gated. And if you want to sell on Amazon, you must satisfactorily prove that you qualify for their strict guidelines through a rigorous application process.
