February 4, 2022, 12:05 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
Many users want to know who they’re buying from when shopping online. Retail giant Amazon has created an opaque network of private labels. TECHBOOK has uncovered what this is all about.
Not only independent sellers list their products for sale on Amazon. The platform also features numerous so-called Amazon brands. TECHBOOK has discovered what this entails and how buyers can recognize them.
Initial Clues About Amazon Brands
Users can narrow their product search with the “Our Brands” filter to focus on Amazon private labels. There, you’ll find familiar names like “Amazon Basics,” “Echo,” “Kindle,” and “Amazon Essentials,” which can be clearly identified as Amazon private labels. However, there are also names like “Umi,” “Bofute,” and “Haylou.” While these are also found under “Our Brands,” there is a clear distinction.
Not All Amazon Brands Are the Same
There are two types of Amazon brands, as TECHBOOK has learned from company sources. They differ as follows:
Amazon IP (True Amazon Private Labels)
Amazon registers only a portion of the brands itself. In this case, we refer to Intellectual Property (IP)–Amazon’s own intellectual property. These brands are registered by the company in the commercial register, making them 100 percent subsidiary brands. They are listed as “trademarks,” funded by Amazon itself, and under its supervision. When we talk about true Amazon private labels, we mean Amazon IPs.
Amazon Exclusives
In addition to its own trademarks, Amazon also counts Exclusives among its brands. These are brands registered by third-party companies but sold exclusively on Amazon. We’ve learned from company sources that startups, for example, can apply for Amazon’s Accelerator Program. The advantage for smaller companies is direct access to distribution, a store page, and sales metrics. Marketing support and even placements on the Amazon homepage and in product searches are possible with good product reviews. Additionally, Amazon Exclusives receive free Vine reviews from members of the secret club.
The advantage for Amazon is that Exclusive Brands offer their products exclusively on Amazon’s sites. This expands the online giant’s own IPs with a wide range of additional brands.
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How Can I Find Out Which Brands Belong to Amazon?
How can Amazon customers find out how many brands belong to Amazon and which are directly from Amazon? Amazon itself only offers the option to filter individual product searches.
Amazon does not maintain a complete public list of which brands belong to the company. At least on Amazon.de, there is a list of trademarks that belong to the company. On Amazon.com, there is also a digital storefront where some brands are listed. There are also links to specific shopping categories that can be searched exclusively for Amazon Brands. Another trick that can help identify them is a browser extension for Google Chrome. The “Amazon Brand Detector” highlights products on the Amazon site in orange to mark them as belonging to the company.
However, this is still not a complete overview of all brands that belong to Amazon. Through a bit of experimentation, TECHBOOK has found a way to achieve exactly that. We found the tag that Amazon uses to label its own products on the Amazon.de site. By converting this tag into a web link, you can search the shopping site exclusively for Amazon Brands. You can recognize this by the “Our Brands” category appearing next to the search field, which is otherwise hidden. You can see how this works in our short explainer video:
You can find the hidden category by following this link: https://www.amazon.de/s?srs=14706515031.
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Distinguishing Between Amazon IPs and Exclusives
But how can you tell if the products come from Amazon itself or from third parties? Amazon couldn’t provide us with an answer to this question either. So we did our own research. In Germany, brands must be registered with the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). Using the commercial register’s search function, you can quickly find out which company registered a particular brand.
For example, a search for the brand “Pinzon” at the DPMA shows that it was registered by Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l. This matches the fact that “Pinzon” also appears in the list of Amazon trademarks. If you search instead for the brand “Bofute,” which appears in the hidden “Our Brands” category, you get a different result. The DPMA entry reveals that the brand comes from a Chinese company.
Conclusion: More Transparency from Amazon Is Desirable
Unfortunately, Amazon is very secretive when it comes to its own brands on the shopping site. As a result, users may purchase a brand from the U.S. company without knowing it. TECHBOOK has found ways to identify Amazon Brands. And not only that: with some research, any user can find out whether it’s a private label or an Amazon Exclusive brand.
Nevertheless, we wish for more transparency from Amazon, better labeling the brands on the site. This would give customers certainty about who they’re buying from when shopping online. This includes not only labeling each private label as such but also distinguishing between Amazon’s registered brands and Amazon Exclusives.