Safeguarding E-Commerce Success: The Importance of Brand Protection Against Counterfeits

by TRENT FAIRBROTHER, Brand Protection Strategic Partnerships Manager at Amazon, WiT Advocate

The success of your brand can in many ways depend upon the success of your e-commerce strategy. At Amazon, we obsess over our customers and selling partners, and are dedicated to protecting our selling partners like you from counterfeiters that would threaten your brand and business. When a customer makes a purchase through e-commerce stores like Amazon, they should trust that they will receive an authentic product. When they don’t, the customer, the stores, and your brand are all negatively impacted.

That is why Amazon and Women in Toys, Licensing & Entertainment (WiT) have partnered to provide expert support, best-in-class brand protection tools, and the educational resources needed to maintain the trust WiT members have earned with their customers. WiT is passionate about supporting its members and community. Amazon is proud to partner with groups like WiT, brands, law enforcement agencies, and others as we continue to innovate toward driving counterfeits to zero in our store.

Brand protection strategies play a vital role in mitigating the risks associated with counterfeiting. By safeguarding your brand through Brand Protection, you maintain the integrity and distinctiveness of your brand, strengthening customer recognition and loyalty. Protecting your brand fosters trust among customers, assuring them of authenticity.

Over the last year, Amazon partnered with WiT to provide its members with a five-part brand protection webinar series and rolled out the Building Protection Initiative, designed to provide one-on-one brand protection support to women-owned businesses. These programs allow brands to grow in Amazon’s stores, and better manage and protect their brand and intellectual property rights.

Amazon’s mission is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, and earning and maintaining customer trust is crucial. Brand protection tools such as Amazon Brand Registry, Transparency, and Automated Brand Protections enhance your brand’s ability to identify and remove counterfeit listings, ensuring the sale of authentic products, and reinforcing customer loyalty.

More information about Amazon’s brand protection efforts can be found here in the 2023 Brand Protection Report.

How can brand protection make a difference for your company? Let’s learn more from the WiT members who are leading the way in protecting their brands every day.

DeeDee Wright-Ward, Founder & CEO, Purpose Toys: For Purpose Toys and Purpose Toys LATIN, everything starts with community.
Through our culture-driven products, we celebrate stories centered in and around community. We take a similar approach in business. As a team of brand development experts, we view brand protection from a community-centered lens. As it takes a village to uplift and elevate the unique messaging of an original brand, it also takes a cohesive and supportive business community to amplify the unique purpose and service each brand stands to offer…thereby creating a protective community around each brand.

Founder Carolina Acosta and Head of Marketing Aralis Mejia, Tragos Game: Brand protection, to us, is all about keeping our integrity, reputation, and one-of-a-kind vibe intact. We take serious measures to prevent anyone from messing with our products, trademarks, and all our valuable intellectual property.

We’re all about keeping it real, keeping it authentic, and establishing trust with our audience.

Marjorie Spitalnik, Founder and CEO, Little Rebels: Protecting your brand and intellectual property (IP) is a huge challenge. Brand protection is like a superhero squad that shields your brand from sneaky copycats and counterfeiters — like building an unbreakable fortress around your creation. We’re continually watching for trademark infringement, busting fake products, keeping an eye on sketchy distribution channels, and securing our IP rights. With a killer brand protection strategy, you gain customer trust, maintain high brand value, and stay ahead of the competition. But it’s tough, especially for small businesses like mine with limited budgets.

Acosta: The most crucial aspect of protecting our IP is preserving the identity and authenticity of Tragos Game; our products, digital and in-person experiences, and overall brand. Through our logo trademark, we protect the name of the brand and use it at all times in its correct form to ensure others that whatever we publish is of the Tragos company.

Wright-Ward: The most important elements of IP protection are ownership and uniqueness. Minority and woman-owned, in 2022, Purpose Toys brought the world’s first all-Black Natural Hair fashion doll line to major retail (NATURALISTAS). Without the uniqueness of this distinction, an original brand such as NATURALISTAS could have easily gotten lost in a sea of messaging. Ownership of IPs and trademarks provided NATURALISTAS with a certain protection in the marketplace which allowed our brand to fulfill its purpose to the children it serves, without fear of infringement.

Spitalnik:  Having IP rights including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets gives you legal control over your ideas and creations, impressing investors and encouraging innovation. For Little Rebels, everything is about our essence, our women, our stories, and all of that, including myself, are embedded in our brand, so protecting it became crucial, especially when we started looking for funds. The moment we share that even with no budget, we were able to protect our name and logo, our identity, and close deals with foundations like Malala Fund, and women like Dr. Gladys B. West, Gitanjali Rao, and Dr. Silvia Earle, securing their IP rights, their faces immediately change and they start to pay more attention to what we have to say. There is a lot that can be done with little or no money to protect your brand and bring a unique value to it. Doing so will set you apart from the competition.

Wright-Ward: As one of the top retailers and the top marketplace in the world, Amazon is a gift for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Amazon evens the playing field for healthy competition. As “competition” often presents itself in the form of knock-offs, as the owner of many IPs, brand uniqueness and brand protection are always top-of-mind.

Acosta: Amazon has significantly influenced our approach to brand protection. With the vast reach of online marketplaces, including Amazon, the risk of counterfeiting and unauthorized sellers has increased. We’ve seen about two accounts attempting to sell our products on Amazon and this has prompted us to be more vigilant and proactive in monitoring and enforcing our intellectual property rights.

Spitalnik: Brand protection has forced companies to adapt their sales strategies to mitigate risks associated with online marketplaces like Amazon. Many brands have developed direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels, enabling them to have more control over their distribution and maintain a consistent brand experience. Little Rebels’ case is a bit different because we come from a DTC-first perspective, so our sales strategy changed in the opposite direction.

We started working with B2B more and more, and one of the reasons for this is to empower our brand enough to make sure that, if the time comes that we have to fight, we have the resources to do so, but this also forced us to be sure we had our brand safe, since we are available at big retailers such as Macy’s, and to do so, you need to be protected.

As a small business owner, brand protection is like this challenging puzzle we have to solve every day, but that’s when scrappiness and creativity come into place.

Wright-Ward:  Having an Amazon storefront where customers can enjoy a unique shopping experience is one of our favorite variables that comes with an Amazon retail partnership. With brand protection, Purpose Toys and Purpose Toys LATIN can conduct business with little anxiety, knowing that there is a business community within the Amazon family acutely tuned in to, and protective of the positioning and healthy performance of our original brands.

Acosta:  In having proper trademark documentation, we’ve been able to secure ourselves as the dominant account of our own brand. Particularly on Amazon, we’ve successfully enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry and now have access to higher brand protection. It’s important to consider legal protection as well as maintaining a consistent brand throughout all channels so there is no questioning the authenticity of our company.

Wright-Ward: Counterfeit protection is a never-ending battle. We work night and day making sure that our relationship with our core customer remains authentic, and that we continue to provide products and an experience that customers value. Brand authenticity will always be one of the best forms of brand protection.

Acosta:  Though relatively uncommon, we’ve protected Tragos Game against counterfeits by constantly monitoring all channels and addressing the issue of any competing accounts selling our product without permission directly on Amazon. Working with Amazon has enabled us to stay alert and swiftly identify and address any counterfeit listings that may arise.

Spitalnik: The implementation of the Amazon Brand Registry empowers brand owners to assert more control over their product listings, making it easier to report and remove counterfeit items. We are just getting started with it but I am confident that it will be a game changer for us.

Wright-Ward: Amazon helps our brands each day as one of the most trusted and powerful search engines in the world. When customers search for Purpose Toys, Purpose Toys LATIN, and Purpose Toys’ Brands, customers can trust Amazon will always direct them to the real deal!

Wright-Ward:  The biggest threat to any small brand is a large corporation void of ideas, with an endless marketing budget. However, the biggest threat to large corporations is the ire of communities protective of the authentic, culture- and community-driven brands they helped build. As the Purpose Toys and Purpose Toys LATIN brands are community-focused and community-built, we are fortunate that our IPs are not only legally protected, they are culturally and morally protected by the very families and communities we are honored to serve.

Acosta:  As a small brand, one of the significant challenges we face is the lack of resources compared to larger companies. Implementing and maintaining robust brand protection measures can be financially demanding and require more expert insight, particularly when several trademarks could be considered necessary in order to be fully covered. In not having all the resources necessary at our disposal when applying for our first trademark ourselves, we were left facing consequences that hurt the business. I recommend that all small brands spend the time and budget to have a proper copyright lawyer to support the business.

Spitalnik:  Small brands face unique challenges in protecting their IP. Limited resources and brand recognition often hinder their ability to monitor and enforce IP rights effectively. Moreover, the global nature of e-commerce makes it difficult for small businesses to address infringement and counterfeiting in foreign markets. Collaborative efforts, affordable IP protection services, and government support can play a crucial role in easing the struggles of small brands. Partnerships were a game changer for us. It is still a challenge for small brands like Little Rebels to be safe with such limited resources, both funding and staff-related.

A version of this feature was originally published in the 2023 Toy Fair issue of The Toy Book. Click here to read the full issue! Want to receive The Toy Book in print? Click here for subscription options!