Creating a Brand: Forming a Legal Entity

The decision to start selling on Amazon is very exciting! As you may expect, however, there are many key factors to consider and a huge amount of often-confusing information to digest. One major aspect of starting a business is selecting what legal entity type makes sense for you. A sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC)? Your exact needs depend on how you plan to grow your company over time. Our firm can advise you on the type of legal entity that is right for you and your business. 

How to Start Selling on Amazon

These days, Amazon is synonymous with selling. Need a product of virtually any kind or type imaginable? Go on Amazon. If you ask someone where they purchased a particular item, oftentimes the answer is “I got it on Amazon.” From the biggest, most valuable companies in the world to individual entrepreneurs offering handmade goods, Amazon is widely considered the best platform because hundreds of millions of people visit the site every month to do their shopping. 

You will need to take several actions before you jump onto Amazon and start selling. These include developing a business plan, determining what specific product or products you will sell, finding a selling point, conducting market research, figuring out your product supplier, and ordering from that supplier. Once all of these steps have been accomplished, you are ready to register an Amazon seller account. 

Amazon offers two types of seller accounts: Individual and Professional. An Individual seller account may make sense if you plan on selling 40 items or less per month, and/or if you are still in the process of deciding what to sell. On the other hand, a Professional account will be suitable if you plan on selling well over 40 products a month and/or if you will require advanced selling tools or programs. 

Benefits to E-Commerce on Amazon

There are many benefits to selling on Amazon. For one, customers around the world trust Amazon and that credibility is extremely persuasive. Consider the fact that Amazon is a household name, and if a customer has purchased goods on the platform in the past, they will likely do so again. The presence of your store on Amazon means that you will get to share in consumer trust of the entire platform, meaning you will sell more products. 

Another advantage of selling on Amazon is that it permits your consumer base to grow. A given shopper’s search for a particular product can lead them to find your store. If they have a satisfying experience buying that product from your store, your chances of having a repeat customer dramatically increase. 

Selling on Amazon also means you can ship goods to 100 countries around the world! The platform makes global expansion of your business very possible. As an e-commerce retailer, you can test a product’s appeal by listing it on a local Amazon in a given market and then decide if you want to expand into that territory. Amazon’s international order fulfillment and customer support makes that kind of expansion manageable. 

Keeping Costs Low, Amazon FBA

Another benefit of utilizing Amazon as a seller is that the cost of marketing is comparatively low. The platform functions as a search engine, in effect, so anyone looking for a product you offer can find your store with relative ease. Investing time into making your listings as perfect as possible goes a very long way. You also have the option to advertise on Amazon to boost your store’s visibility on the results page. Amazon advertising includes Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Lockscreen Ads, and Sponsored Display. 

Amazon Account Issues: What to Expect 

Without a doubt, Amazon provides e-commerce sellers an enormous amount of opportunity to sell their products with great success. At the same time, you may expect to encounter various roadblocks on the way to achieving that success. 

• Listing Suspensions
• Account Suspensions 
• Payment Disputes 
• Arbitration Against Amazon

Stockman & Poropat, PLLC knows the intricate ins-and-outs of the above common Amazon seller issues and much more. Unfortunately, allegations of intellectual property infringement on the platform frequently occur. Regardless, our intention is to ensure that your business thrives on Amazon. To that end, we provide appropriate tailor-made action plans designed to achieve account reinstatement and/or lawsuit resolution. We have effectively utilized appeals and legal actions to get hundreds of hard working e-commerce sellers the money they have rightfully and legally earned on Amazon. 

Attorneys Can Improve Your Success on Amazon

With highly skilled attorneys on your side, your business operation on Amazon will run more smoothly when it inevitably encounters an intellectual property infringement claim. 

For example, take trademark infringement. We can guide you through the process of how to understand what the allegations are, what efforts you can take to resolve the matter, how to negotiate a solution, the process of filing an appeal, and/or how to move forward if a lawsuit has been filed against your business. 

Perhaps you will need to verify your Amazon account due to the implementation of the INFORM Consumers Act. This is somewhat of an evolving new aspect of selling on Amazon and has caused disruptions for many businesses that believed they were already in full compliance with the platform’s policies. We can help with this, too! 

From inception to daily operation, Stockman & Poropat, PLLC is here to provide you with all the legal counsel your Amazon business will require to perform at the highest level and make the most money. 

Up next we will be discussing Dropshipping on Amazon.