[zeroego]

I work at a CPG and another issue we have to deal with is an individual having an "in" at a distributor and being able to purchase our products at rock bottom prices. We can usually track these people down, but they can really throw a wrench into an ASINs profitability for a while.

[ummonk]

How does this work? By "our products" you mean products your company produces, right? Are you sending the products to the distributor at a price that is too low to make a profit? Why does it matter to you whether they products are bought directly from you on Amazon or through one of your distributors and resold on Amazon by a third party?

[zeroego]

There's a couple reasons it matters. Unauthorized third parties rarely care about representing our brand correctly. When a consumer has a problem with a product they received the first person they blame is the brand, not realizing they bought it from a completely separate entity. The product breaking during shipment, the customer buying at a price just to go back and check days later and see a lower price, the product being expired...All of these things are outside of our control, yet as a brand we take the blame.

In my particular case, there is an "anti-FBA" culture at the company I work for. No one can sell our product for as cheap as we can because we make it. However, without access to FBA, it's much more difficult to have complete control over your pricing on amazon. With complete control over pricing you can ensure that your margins will be better than whatever distributor pricing is. Also the competitiveness of our products on the platform against other brands is directly affected by how much the seller (either us or an unauth)can afford to sell the product to the consumer. If a competing brand sells the same thing for cheaper, they will get more sales and thus more market share.

I say "my particular case" but in reality I know of several CPG companies where the anti-FBA culture exists, even though it is the most advantageous approach to selling on amazon with regards to pricing. I wrote this kind of fast so I hope it all makes sense.