If you’ve built or contributed to building a brand from scratch, you know what a labor of love it is. So much hard work, stress, blood, sweat, and tears go into the enterprise that it’s terrifying to imagine how much damage a little bad luck and a few bad actors can wreak. Just like you protect your personal identity, built over a lifetime of chosen and inherited traditions, values, ideals, and interests, brand identity control is just as vital. It’s what defines you in the eyes of your customers, and it means the difference between business success and failure.

That’s why brand control is — both literally and figuratively — the foundation upon which Recom’s successful brand partnerships are built. Recom’s founders began with this cornerstone service as the company’s primary differentiator years ago, and it remains at the center of achieving sustainable growth.

Armed with sophisticated systems, processes, and proprietary technologies, our brand control experts scour the marketplaces and beyond for unauthorized sellers, counterfeit products, distorted price points, and other harmful activities.

For instance, one brand that sought out Recom’s help had over 1,000 unauthorized resellers but couldn’t take even basic protective actions through Amazon’s Brand Registry system because they lacked the essential foundations. Once they connected with Recom, however, our experts walked them through establishing the necessary legal footing, enabling them to take swift action to protect their intellectual property. The result: Recom shut down 800 rogue sellers within months and skyrocketed Buy Box control from a low of 52% to over 90% in 90 days. That number sits at 96% today.

It’s just one example of how a skilled brand control team can plug the holes causing revenue leakage threatening to drain a brand dry.

So why exactly is brand control critical? It breaks down into five distinct elements. Complete control on Amazon gives businesses better leeway to establish healthy brand integrity, ensuring accurate catalog content representation and reputation maintenance. It also enables finer price control to support sales prices that reflect the item’s value and maintain margins. Product authenticity combats negative experiences with counterfeit or expired products by eliminating imposters, a concern nesting neatly within a consistently positive customer experience. And finally, Buy Box control provides full autonomy to market a full catalog for sustainable brand growth.

Fortunately, Recom wields an arsenal of defensive tools to ensure partnered brands protect themselves in the ecommerce space. Proprietary brand control tools enabling capabilities like real-time “test buy” tracking, Buy Box suppression investigation, and a secure evidence locker help brands come down hard on unauthorized sellers, which are easier than ever to find thanks to keyword search tools identifying suspicious listings. Meanwhile, real-time analytics allow for precise impact tracking.

Recom’s proprietary defense tools, working in tandem with Amazon Transparency, take this concept to the next level. A proactive defense against counterfeits and unauthorized supply chain diversions, Transparency guarantees customers receive genuine products and buyer experiences. In a case study of one item, average daily sales jumped from $2,660 to $5,274 as brand control services were implemented. In terms of percentage gain, that amounts to a 98% increase!

With all these programs and tools working together, Recom is equipped to take aggressive protection actions on behalf of our partners in both direct and indirect ways. On the direct end, we identify unauthorized sellers, send warnings and cease and desist notices, file IP complaints and, if necessary, draft litigation. Moreover, Recom agents coordinate with our partners and distributors, purchase order blocks, create brand registries, and restrict supply indirectly.

What’s more, implementing brand control for an onboarding partner is both seamless — that’s thanks to the extensive experience of the Recom team — and tailored, with each brand receiving a control strategy tailored to its unique circumstances.

The process starts with step one: market analysis and scope definition as Recom identifies brand challenges and evaluates online reputation. The goal is to determine reseller recount and distribution issues while evaluating current strategies and operations. Meanwhile, Recom’s team reviews sellers, competitors, pricing, and counterfeits; creates pre-enforcement market analysis; and defines success criteria aligning with findings.

After the initial legwork is completed, Recom gets to work on the second step: creating a legal foundation for protection services. That means drafting or updating agreements, listing IP assets, strengthening warranties and guarantees, and addressing unauthorized sales; creating or modifying minimum advertised price (MAP) policies and establishing cease and desist procedures; and defining and protecting material difference.

Then comes the third step of the process: brand implementation of the key policies and procedures. Recom supports the brand’s efforts in establishing the new policies and notifying stakeholders and all customers. This is the phase in which enrollment in programs like Amazon Transparency begins and important legwork — such as distributing new agreements for e-signatures and advising stakeholders on effectively sharing policy changes — takes place.

Finally, in the fourth step of brand control implementation, Recom maintains constant vigilance over brand health, monitoring for new sellers, pricing violations, and marketplace issues 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sending enforcement notifications, conducting test buys, and filing IP complaints as needed.

Brand control requires careful and constant attention. But the rewards are well worth the effort. With proper protection efforts implemented, brands can see spectacular percentage gains. If you’re frustrated by unauthorized and potentially illegal activity poaching your sales, reach out to Recom! Our experts are happy to demonstrate how Recom can protect your brand online.