#454 - 153 Knockoffs & 1 Shutdown: The True Cost of Selling on Amazon with Chris Keef

Protecting Your Amazon Listing Strategies Welcome to episode 454 of the AMM podcast. My guest this week is Chris Rising Competition in Online Sales Reef. That's right. We're going to be talking about protecting your listing on Amazon. What's happening with you you're getting knocked off with with other sellers, especially from China, coming on. He's got a example of a story of someone that had 153 different knockoffs come onto their product despite them having a patent and uh trademark and everything on their item. and then they ended up having their account shut down. So, it's crazy stuff, but we're going to talk about some strategies and some ways to actually combat that and actually protect yourself on Amazon. Enjoy this episode of the AMM podcast. Welcome to the AM podcast. Welcome to the AM podcast where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, plus this is the podcast for Money Never Sleeps. Working around the clock in the A.M. and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, said, are you you ready? Ready. Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin. Kevin, Chris Keefe, finally got you on the AM podcast. I think we've known each other for I don't know a decade or more maybe. Uh how you doing man? Doing well. Appreciate it. Yeah, that's the space is funny. You tend to orbit around people and uh we we've sort of like bumped into each other a few times. You've spoken at a couple of of our events when I was doing some live stuff and you know I've known about you for a long time. It's so it's great to finally connect in more of a a real kind of professional setting as opposed to dinners here and there and events like that. Yeah, it it is. I mean you've been doing this ecoms thing and selling for a long time, right? I mean, you Yeah. I um real quick, my background um I'm a I consider myself a recovering corporate guy. So, I wasn't uh you're a you're a an entrepreneur, I think, knowing a little bit about your background and your story. I think you were, you know, kind of a grade school hustling and selling stuff, right? At least at least somewhat from from from your story. So, I had a bit of an entrepreneurial mind, but didn't have the the kind of the family that would just sort of saw that risk-taking. So, a job was kind of ideal. I put myself through college, went to UNH, I painted homes, loved it, very entrepreneurial, made some good money, but it it was still my my gray hair shows and getting a little bit older. It was kind of a thing of get the job, work at that job for 30, 40 years, get your gold watch. That still was kind of the zeitgeist, which is pretty funny. So, I I ended up with a psych degree of all things. Didn't do that, but I got in the business with my with my background of painting houses. So, I was in business for years. I actually had a pretty meteoric rise. Um, I spent a lot of time in semiconductor and and ancillary equipment around that. So that put me in China, Singapore, Taiwan, Southeast Asia. So I got a good sense of what was going on with supply chain kind of culturally, what the differences were and I saw the growth of manufacturing going to China and I saw that entire shift happening right before my eyes. So my meteoric rise was sales guy and then sales manager and then I was a director of sales and I was tapped to be the vice president of sales and I won't go into the whole corporate's not bad but I saw that wasn't the path for me late I was like 40 years old and I said okay that's um not for me so I ended up just going into e-commerce and it since about 2010ish or so I I just jump ship burn the ships and I went out on my own and a lot of people thought I was insane cuz I looked at my W2 the other day in modern dollars whereas my salary was about 260k and I had a company car and expensive. I'm like who why would you give that up to do to to to sell on Amazon? But I saw the opportunity and I knew that that that things were shifting to e-commerce. So I I moved into e-commerce building my own sites. Amazon wasn't too big and then like many people um there's the how to sell online training course uh actually the the the amazing selling machine that was like many many many people bought into that here I am. So I I haven't really looked back. So, I've been out the e-commerce game and Amazon for a good long time. I've seen great stuff. I've seen some sketchy stuff. You mentioned black hat things and um yeah, I'd love to talk more about kind of what we're doing right now and trying to help level the playing field for for a number of uh sellers in the space. Now, are you still selling uh at all or have you moved on? So, you're still managing uh Amazon and e-commerce accounts? Great question. I I started initially with PL so doing private label stuff and then I moved into training and kind of the business opportunity and that was more of the wholesale model of selling. That's what that you you mentioned, Todd. That's what Todd and I were doing. Had a training course on how to work with distributors and online brands and sell on Amazon doing the wholesale model. I think that's still viable, but I don't think that's quite margins have shrunk significantly. Amazon fees, as we know, have increased dramatically. I think that's a harder business model. Not impossible, but harder. We still do private label. We still run our own brands. Um, a lot of time what we do nowadays is we try to partner with brands, people that have maybe a patent or have some intellectual property that they've got a little bit of a a digital moat. They've got something that's more of a competitive advantage. I think it's a little bit harder nowadays for that ubiquitous, you know, feather on a string cat toy. I think those days might be over. Um, it's hard to compete in that space, right? So, you need something that's a little bit more unique. So, we still sell products. We still do private label products. We have some partnerships with brands. We're doing just shy of 10 million bucks or so on our own stuff, but we also have partnerships where we work with brands where we run their Amazon sales forum. And we do a lot of work on actual IP enforcement, whether it's trademark protection, copyright, um, and also trying to help with people that might be cheating a little bit. And that's that's kind of the part where things like false advertising and things that I'm seeing from from Chinese sellers that just aren't they don't set well with me. and I don't think they're they're right. We um we help fix that. So, do you have a legal background or are you partnered up with a uh someone with a legal? That's a great question. I have to be very clear and say I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. I don't ever want to be a lawyer. No offense to lawyers, but um we are not lawyers at all. Um that's a very specific subset of knowledge, right? Being the having that legal background and doing things the right way. We come at it from the Amazon side of the house. What I found is as good as lawyers are, they're like that can't possibly. They see some things happening and they're like that there's no way that's happening. Like Amazon wouldn't allow that to happen, right? And we're like, it is happening here. Here's what's here's what's going on. Here are the the the the specifics. Here are the sellers and things like that. So, we are not lawyers. We uh do not take the legal route oursel. We partner with a legal team that is exceptional. They're aggressive in what they do. they follow Concerns About Data Security all the rules as they need to um because they don't want to lose their law license. But I say that because you mentioned it. There's there's just everybody wants that angle and they want that edge. And what we're we're seeing is there you probably remember going back eight nine years. I mean there were situations where people were were getting information from Amazon uh people from inside the walls of Amazon employees, right? They I think I think the case was they flew them down to Costa Rica or something and they're basically like, "Hey, give us some info. Help us with this account. Get rid of these reviews." Like some really nefarious, really highlevel stuff. Because when you're talking the millions of dollars that are made on Amazon, it it's amazing. I get that. So, we're not lawyers, but what we see is what we started to see is these these brands would come to us and say, "Man, let me give you a specific example. Um, someone came to us with a product uh that did everything right. She has a patent on it. It's uh the product is easy outlet. She has a patent on the product. She has trademarks, copyrights. She's done everything correct. Five years in development. It's a fantastic product. That's just nothing like it on the marketplace. She launches it on Amazon finally. 5 years. You know, I don't know the total amount, but it's in the six figures to get this thing launched. She launches and Kevin, wouldn't you believe it? Some influencer sees it, picks it up, and says, "This thing's really cool." sells out her inventory, a couple thousand units, like virtually instantaneously. That's the power of of Tik Tok, right? And it just blows up. Good for her. Like, oh, what am I going to do now? It's amazing what happened next. Her account had been up less than 60 days. That product was going less than 60 days. Within 2 weeks, her account is shut down. Just disappears off the map through some very, very strange set of circumstances. and she has 100 plus competitors selling knockoffs of that product that are really poor quality. Her product is dead in the water before it even gets started. That that's the kind of thing that that's that can't that to me that that does that that can't stand. I mean, you've got someone that did the the great American dream, right? You've done everything properly. You've done everything right. You've you've gone through all the steps to do all the things you're supposed to do. And then you're kind of kicked in the teeth saying, "That's cool, and I know you did everything right, but competition's hard. Business is hard, man. What are you going to do?" So, what we did is she came to us and said, "Can can you help me here?" Like, I I this is this is brutal. What's happening? And we said, "I you remember earlier Amazon, there was a life cycle to a product, which I understand. You sold the product and invariably Chinese sellers would kind of grab a hold of it and then it would kind of water down the price. They were direct from the manufacturers and it was, you know, hard to make the margin. So you had what was it? You'd have sometimes 6 months to 18 month and a half on that product life cycle. 18 months usually is the the end of it. Yeah. 18 months. So that never sat well with me cuz I'm like God like making a product and only only like the clock like you could say go and the clock's ticking. What if you've got a patent and what if you got copyrights and trademarks? You like say hey look I want to sort of like imagine Apple going well we're going to you know send something out there. We only got 18 months out of it. No, you need some life to that because you're putting so much time and effort into it. So, she came to us and said, "Hey, can I get some help here?" So, what the legal team does, and again, this is from the legal standpoint, is say, "What can we do from a patent side of the house? What can we do from copyright?" So, images are being just full-on stolen. You can't I mean, that's an easy one. You can't do that. That's just that's someone creates those images. That is their property. You can't steal that. So, that's one one direction to go. And so, they help with that part of it. The bigger part, Kevin, is that shocked me was when the law firm took those bought those products and had a look at them and said, "Okay, let's analyze this in depth. Are there are they they infringing on a patent? Are they infringing? Where are there possible issues here?" Here's the part that scared the hell out of me. Each of those products 153 and then initial sweep 153 knockoff 153 different vendors different different vendors 153 in a m in in a matter of a month from launching this product. Every one of those products was highly unsafe. None of them were grounded. They're sold as such. They've got a a 110vt US threeprong outlet and it's a not grounded product. So it's an outlet extender is what it is. And it's that crazy problem where you've got an outlet behind your, let's call it a nightstand or maybe behind your bed. You're like, how am I going to re, you know, reach down and put it's s one of those things you go, gh, why didn't I think of that? And it's a cool little extending outlet that is it's uh tested. It is ETL approved. You have to go through all these rigorous, you know, standards to get the thing tested and safe. And yet you've got sellers going, I'm just going to ship whatever cuz you can't find me. I'm in China. I'm not going to get sued. I don't give a rip. or that's probably being a bit unkind. They're probably selling the thing without, you know, being malicious about it. But at the end of the day, you can't sell, you know, unsafe products. So, that was an unsafe product and that that lawsuit is um as we're recording this, it's ongoing right right now. And there's going to be a pretty amazing result of that where those get taken down because you can't sell unsafe products. And it's a tough one. You know this. Amazon kind of throws their hands up. Well, it's like a mole a lot of times, too. I mean, you might get all 153 down, but I guarantee there's going to be 40 more come up right after that. Yeah. And Yeah. We just had a person on uh I do another podcast called the Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar. It's not about Amazon, but we had a a woman come on, Mary Harkort, and she developed this light uh she's she was uh doing eyelashes for women and all the lighting that was designed was had shadows and so they need to see these fine hairs and she so she developed this arc light that actually lit the thing up and now it's turned out it's really great for tattoo artists and it's really great for all this stuff. She patented it um put it up on Amazon and immediately she had uh it's a $500 light. She had people selling it for 70 knockoffs for $79 that are pieces of junk. She says she bought them and they're they're pieces of junk and she's constantly fighting it right now and she's taken down about 38 of them so far. Well, it's a constant battle and she just had to build that into her margin for legal fees and it it's and then what she decided to do is actually knock herself off. Uh, so she's like, "Well, if everybody else is going to actually mine's $4.99. I'll create one for, you know, in the same price range that's better quality with a with a goal of I'll when you buy that, I'll ups I'll sell I'll let you trade that in and upsell and upsell you to my my good one, you know, and say, "Hey, so that that's what she's she's doing to actually counter that." But it's a it's a it's been a problem and and people Navigating IP Protection in Global E-Commerce always use the word hijackers. You know, there's a hijacker on my list. That's a common word you see in in the forums and sometimes these people don't have any protection and they have just gone to Alibaba and stuck their logo on something and they really don't have protection and there's not much you can do but if you go to the point of developing something like you said for 5 years and getting spending the money for IP making sure it's purely safe it's total BS that someone can come in and do what what they're doing. Um and like you said Amazon just throws up their hands and and and they don't care. I think the number one step, you know, maybe this will happen now, this tariff stuff that's been going on the last several months, is anybody that sells in the US, just like Tik Tok does, you have to be a US citizen. You or you have to be have a US representative or, you know, ID or partner in the US so that you can be sued, so you can be stopped and and stop this. But Amazon doesn't they're still actively courting Chinese sellers and Chinese factories. And now I just had someone on talking about sourcing on on the AMM podcast. I think it was last week's episode uh if you're when you guys are listening to this um that was talking about now it's a huge thing and Amazon's pushing it factory direct not only just with Hall but actually to Amazon and a lot of these factories are now cutting out the middleman and and just going direct. It's it's uh called M uh was manufactured direct uh M MDS or something like that. there's a there's a terminology something for it. Um so what what what can be done about this? Uh um you know it's not just that like you said the the cheating is rampant. I mean with tariff with with not doing the proper uh certifications and the things are dangerous with with uh cheating on the the tariffs and uh you know not put in a different category and underpaying and putting it's just it's crazy what's what's happening. Yeah, it's it's a great question. I I it's a complex issue and I want I do want to be very clear. I I I don't want to have there a lot of times there's pitchforks and uh torches, right? The villagers of, you know, an anti-China sentiment. That is not it at all. I mean, I I've take I I' I've been to China a number of times and I I I love the country and when you you travel a lot in the world. When you I've been to China many times, too. I mean, China's more sophisticated and better and the big cities of China are way above way ahead of the United States. Yeah. And and it's a good people and and and you know, China's really good. They're not I I just read a book uh recently I think it's called OneStep China or something. They're talking about the six pillars of of Chinese manufacturing and one of those and they're saying that they're not great at innovating but they're great at second generation innovation. So they're they're not known, you know, what's that Apple thing says designed in Cubertino. Um or made in China, designed in Certino or something. Um that's that's kind of they're very very good at taking something that already exists and then fine-tuning it or improving it a little bit or or figuring out how to make it cheaper or better or whatever. And that's the problem we have is we'll someone like your client there will innovate and then they'll just blindly knock it off uh and and don't and then completely don't care and there's not much you can do. I mean she had IP I guess I'm assuming just in the United States. Does she have IP in China as Intellectual Property Rights Across Borders well? So there there's the rub, right? Yeah. there. She had it in the United States and I want to make sure again I'm not a lawyer so the the the language I want to make sure it's right and if I'm I'm wrong don't don't hold me to it but with copyrights in the US it's first to uh use and then in China it's first to file. So you got this weird phenomena where I I believe I've got to check this one. I believe Apple still pays technically for something on one of their copy or trademarks because if you file if you file it first file a name they then can kind of block your shipments coming from China like well we have a we have a trademark on that. You're like but that's my product. Yeah, I know but I filed it first in China. You didn't that I mean that I it's not much you're going to do about that. So you kind of so you ask the question what do you do? You have to get the kind of proverbial ducks in a row and make sure you're paying attention to that stuff. But state side to your point it's complex. I don't want to be anti-China at all. And you you explained it perfectly. The US tends to be a lot of innovators innovation the zero to one right. Go from go from nothing the concept of an idea to get that thing launched. China isn't great at that part. They do some. They're really really good at saying hey EV electric vehicles that's cool. I'm going to make this thing super badass now. That's you know credit where credit is due. They're exceptionally good at that. The challenge with Amazon, I believe, Kevin, is the barrier to entry to get into the space is so low that and the dollars are so big. The incentive is there to cheat and cut corners. So, I I'm all for taking a patent and I, you know, poor Kate, I don't I don't want her product with Easy Outlet. I I I I don't want anyone to say, "Oh, I'm going to try to, you know, hack this and and try to get around it on the patent." You could do that, but fair fair play is fair play. good red-blooded capitalist again, want to make money. If you find a new way to do that idea, awesome. But Combatting False Advertising in E-Commerce that's not what typically happens, right? What typically happens is I'm just going to go until I get caught. I'm just going to rip it off fully. I'm going to steal the images and if Amazon says you got to change your images, only then will I change them or I'm just going to do this stuff and I know I can't get sued. I'm going to send them not even doesn't even have a ground wire. I don't give a rip because it's going to take a while for someone to figure that out. And most of the time they don't figure it out or it's too expensive because a lot of the times I've gone to lawyers and asked that question. It's expensive. It's 2550 $100,000 a clip. You're a startup with a new product. You don't have that bandwidth or those dollars to do that. So you're kind of dead in the water. So what do we do? I I think we have to be hypervigilant about this stuff and you have to get ahead of it with an understanding that I'm going to do all the right stuff to lock down my copyright and trademarks. There's there's inexpensive ways to do that. You can file those things. Make sure you say this is my stuff. It's got a digital stamp on it. Put it in a drive folder saying these are my original images. If someone does rip them off, okay, you you've you've now got a stance to say this is, you know, clear the the the metadata in this is when I launched it and and I first took the images or they were first created. They're mine. Try to do IP secure IP whenever you can from a design or utility patent or enforce this stuff. I mean, I I'll I'll give you another example of someone in the space Retail vs E-Commerce Growth Differences that drives me crazy. There's a a very large company came to us that was this this is a unicorn. I think you'll like this one. They were doing depending on the year $30 to $50 million a year in brick-andmortar retail on Amazon. They were doing sub $300,000 a year. I haven't heard that in a long time. That's just a couple years ago. That it's almost always flip-flop, right? Huge on the e-commerce because low barrier to entry, easier to get in there and then people move into retail. He was opposite. It's because in e in retail you actually have to show certifications. You have to have to go through a whole process to get into Walmart or to get into any of the they don't take that chance. I mean you get in you got to prove it. Yeah. And why are there not I I don't want to be unkind but you know on Amazon the the random letters kind of jammed together that become a brand. That's why you don't see those on shelves. Sure, products are manufactured in China. When you go to Target and you go to Walmart and you go to Costco, but they're not like your Blex, whatever brand, you're like, "What the hell does that even say?" Because why you know why they do that, right? It's cuz they can get a trademark on it. They don't have to go back and forth because they're they're not in words. So, it's easy to get a trademark on those. And and and Amazon did try to do the right thing, right? Because they said, "Look, you got to have, you know, in order for brand protection or trademark, you can get a brand a trademark on that." But Amazon didn't tell the poor USPTO, the United States Postal Trademark Office, didn't say, "Hey, we're requiring this of all sellers to have this or to get brand protection." So those guys were caught with their pants down. The government's like, "Hey, heads up would have been awesome." So first action sometimes on this stuff takes, you know, 12 months for the for for the poor the trademark office like, "Holy smokes. So what do we do here?" So you know, it's this comedy of errors that has allowed this whole situation to happen. So the point of the the the flashlight uh business, so so that company that was doing 30 to 50 million in retail, nothing on on Amazon, they had an incredibly hard time getting into the space. Why is that? False advertising, full-on lies. The company's lights, fantastic uh brand, fantastic product. It is LEDs, flashlights, and um handheld spotlights and these kind of things. And what they realized was we're having a hard time breaking into the marketplace because we've got very high-powered, high quality, made for retail. Pick them up and touch like you can't you can't hide say showing a great digital image. You go to the store and pick this thing up and go, "This thing's just like junk." No, no. This thing had to be legitimate stuff. Problem is when you sell it online, you have a very bright flashlight. Now lu I don't want to be super nerdy here but lumens is the measure of brightness for a flashlight right so uh basically candle power or lumens lumens is the measurement so it becomes this weird arms race if you go look um when you guys um when this podcast launches have a look uh it'll hopefully be almost all gone if it's not we're on top of it but right now as the the the federal case has been filed it's now working through the process there's a funny thing that's happened there's an arms race to be the biggest and baddest and most awesome. Okay, so uh Cody from from lightsaw may have a flashlight that's very very bright. 10,000 lumens. It's an amazing flashlight. It's like obscenely bright. It's great, but that's really bright. 10,000 lumens is a is an aggressive amount for a for a handheld flashlight. If you go if you go to Amazon when he first came to us I'm like what is this stuff that's 200,000 500,000 1 million lumens pre I mean hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of listings and that's just physically impossible. I think when we when we did it when we looked at it the world record for lumens was something like 50,000 but it it needed it was a joke as as a engineering kid with a great YouTube channel that built this thing. It's not something that slips into your pocket. This thing is like a battery pack and he like a couple guys had to haul this thing around. So just physically impossible. Yet there are there were hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of these listings, Kevin, that say, "Oh yeah, it's a million lumens. It's 1.5 million." We found a 3 million lumens claim. So why does that matter? That matters because when you're at a store and you can touch something and you feel it, you've got the tactile part, go, "Oh, this thing's rugged. It's heavy. I like this thing." and then next to kind of a like ah it's kind of cheaper. I can tell it's kind of junky. Okay, that that's a tactile real thing. When you're online and you see a great digital image and you've got a Chinese seller that has exponentially lower cost of goods cuz it's kind of a piece of product, but they say, "Yeah, but this thing's this thing's 100,000 lumens." You're like, "1000,000 is a lot more than 10,000. I'm buying the 100,000." So you got this false barrier to entry because people are just plain lying about it. So we went after him and said, "Look, that's fault. That's blatant false advertising. This can't stand. So, our lawyers said, "Dude, this is that that that's about as cut and dry as you can be." Now, it required testing of each of those units. We bought hundreds of them. They went to an actual independent lab, tested every single one of them, and the chart is alarming. We weren't we aren't talking about, well, it's off by 10%, it's off by 20%. The vast majority, more than 75% of these things were about 1 to 5% of the advertised number. 1 to 5%. Imagine an auto manufacturer saying, "Dude, this thing get this car gets 50 miles to the gallon." And you sit in it and you're like, "Yeah, I tested it gets like five five miles to the gallon." Like, ah, what are you going to do? Am I right? That's the same equivalent. Like, that's not it's just blatantly false advertising. You got a company that's wellestablished, been around for a decade, full full health and wellness of their business in the retail space, they're legitimate. They can't break into a space because of just plain lying. We got to fix that. Consumer We need a consumer reports uh for e-commerce certain bad just get a certain badge if it's been independently bought and tested uh you know random random spot buying or something that that could be an opportunity for someone actually um some sort of some some sort of badging on that. But you talk about so back on the IP so even if you have IP or you're in the process of doing that a lot of times you can't do anything. I mean, I know people that will hold off on going to Amazon until their patent or the design patent or or utility patent, which can take a year to 3 years sometimes uh or more get gets approved and then they'll they'll go onto the market places because they know at least they have some sort of uh something in their back pocket to fight the copycatterers. But I remember about 10 years ago um right before I started doing FBA on Amazon, there's a a product that was on uh on Amazon called Bunch of Balloons. It was in the toy category and it's one of these one of these balloons things that uh you attach to the water hose faucet and if you're going to have a a water balloon fight with your kids uh on a hot summer day instead of having to fill out one fill up one water balloon at a time and tie it off, you could do like I don't know 40 of them on this like it look like a spider spiderweb and have all these balloons attached to it so it fill 40 balloons at once and you it would automatically untie them when you ripped it off or something. It's really brilliant thing. these guys out of Dallas were doing it. So, I ended up I had not done FBA yet or private label yet. I just wanted to test the process. So, I bought $10,000 worth of them. I drove up to Dallas, stuck put them in my SUV um and and drove back down, shipped or shipped them into Amazon and tested as a as a reseller. Did really, really well. Next thing I see is they're on infomercials and this the big infomercial company out of New Jersey, U Telebrands, was actually running infomercials and they didn't call it bunch of balloons. They called it I forget they had another name for it. It's a knock a direct knockoff and they're entire and I looked into it and I I talked to some people like how are they doing this? Uh cuz the other guys said they were in the process of filing their design patent. So it hadn't been approved yet. They had filed and everything but hadn't been approved. It been four or five months or something. So they still had 6 months to a year to go before be signed off on. And so, but Telebrands knew they had a window where while that's being looked at before it's certified, they can do the product. So, they they're like, we're just going to take advantage. We don't care. This is a US company, not a Chinese company. This is a US company. Knocking them off and just running with it. And at the end, when they figure that, okay, if this actually works, we'll either license it from them or we'll pay for them or we'll merge with them or something. And that's what they did. So once the they got uh approved, they came back to them and said, "Hey, okay, we want to continue selling. We'll give you a bunch of money because we know and that that was their whole business strategy." Um and so what do you do to the case of the woman that was Mary that was selling the lights, she waited to go on Amazon until she had her her patent um signed off on. She just sold it direct on her own Shopify site for for a while. But what do you what do you do? I mean, um, other than like you said, you can fight them, but what can you what steps can you take or are there any to try to prevent this or should you just say heck with it? I'm just going to launch it and see what happens. Yeah, that's a great question. So, there I I I want to be very clear, too. I I I don't want to I'm still, as I said, very bullish on Amazon because I I when I have conversations about this, it paints a rather scary picture, right? Like, oh my god, that that like why would why does anybody do anything? Because there are predatory I equate it to the mafia business. I mean, you said it earlier, there's so much money involved here. It's like I I I equate the u Amazon to to the Sopranos. Uh, you know, it's it's it's the mafia. Wherever there's money, the mafia is going to come and the bad guys are going to come and they're going to do whatever they got to do to get an edge and take an advantage and and pressure other people. And that's what happens when you have something that's a money printing machine. New York garbage or New Jersey garbage or whatever it was in the Sopranos to selling on marketplaces like Amazon. Yeah, that's a it's a great point. I I think the blue sky part of this is Strategic Approaches to IP Protection that's actually a good problem to have. And I know that sounds okay. Yeah, sure, Rosie. Like people ripping my stuff off. If if someone's willing to do that, it means you've probably got a really fantastic product or there's great opportunity there. So that's the blessing and curse of this situation. So yeah, kind of like the Sopranos. Look, if those guides are there in the in the waste and container management business, there's a reason for that. Everybody gets rid of their garbage. It's a lucrative business. So, what do you do? The I think that one step if you've got patents and not everybody goes through that process like, "Oh my god, I don't want to take two, three, four years to do it." To your point, maybe wait. Or if you've got something in place to say, "Okay, I know that it's going to be a problem and I think this is kind of the next uh mouse trap. I don't want to have it ripped off. I'm going to wait till I get if you can wait till you get your pat in there. But a lot of people aren't even going to get a patent on there. So what what do you do? Trying to create that digital mode is smart. What we have found is like the product of the easy outlet like like the flashlights. If there's legitimate competition that someone has to make a quality product that's not junk, that isn't unsafe, that isn't terrible, they're going to have to compete rather fairly. It's the guys that get in there with really cheap, they're fake, they're lying about it, they're overstating something. Well, of course, their cost of goods is going to be exceptionally lower. I think the current administration, love or hate them, getting rid of as as as at least as far as this podcast when we're recording it, the dimminimus exemption has has been removed. That is massive for us as sellers because a lot of these things that were coming from the Easy Outlet product were being shipped FBM. They want to take advantage of it real quickly and they're kind of a little bit fly by night, right? Just send some someone buy something and they're they're just riding on the wave of what's there. So being vigilant about your product, talking to a law firm, talking to somebody that can help out, reach out to us, people like us, say, "Hey, what can we do here?" Because if someone's selling a a crappier version, they're always much much cheaper because they're probably they're junk. Be vigilant. Stay on top of your your product. Stay on top of the vertical and market that you're in and find out, hey, buy buy a couple of them and say, "Hey, this thing is just not it's not legitimate. It's not real. It's it's incredibly cheap, incredibly crappy." There are usually avenues when someone is that cheap or is able to take over a market. They're cutting corners somewhere. Find out where they're cutting those corners and and try to help out. There are things you can do within Amazon brand registry. They do have the Apex program. You have the ability if you've got a patent, you've got copyright trademarks, you can have stuff taken down there. People may roll their eyes and go, "Dude, I've tried that a 100 times. Amazon just never listens." Okay. Sometimes it does take, like anything in Seller Central, uh um the back end there a number of times, opening those cases or saying the right things. Sometimes even a quick letter from an attorney that's a few hundred bucks, a couple thousand bucks instead of like a massive massive case, that usually shakes the rattles the cage a little bit of the folks at Amazon saying, "Hey, this is a very real thing. We don't want to get things tied up in the legal, you know, channels. Listen to what we're saying. We're not just a frontline, you know, uh uh case here with a with someone with inven." At least that then elevates the problem and then that usually gets listened to. So the steps to take is if you can get some IP, great. If if you're going to go that process, awesome. If you can't, get products where there is a competitive advantage there. Find something that's not super ubiquitous like the example I gave earlier like a cat toy, a little feather on a string. Really hard to not to have something there that's anything better than what you said. If someone's shipping direct from China, it's going to be hard to compete with that. It's not very innovative. It's not very new. It's just a It's just a a basic basic product that can be sold for a couple bucks. Find products that are priced a little bit higher. By the way, I mean, I think we're seeing for the longest time, I think you'll agree, I think $24.99, 25 bucks, 26 bucks is kind of like that sweet spot of the average selling price on Amazon. I with fees increasing, with everything else increasing, look for higher price things because a lot of times they're not going to go after those kind of product. It's it's harder to get a better product, a better quality product. So, those are a couple steps that you can take. My my biggest my biggest advice is just fight for it. If you if you know that you're right, and I know that sounds crazy, but business is hard. It is a contact sport. And there are if you know you're right and you say, "Look, these guys are lying about it. I have proof of that or this thing's junk or they're stealing my images. They're stealing my IP." Keep fighting for that. Is Amazon going to be the first line of the fence? Probably not. I I think they want to do right by sellers when they can, but they've got they're so big. They're so big and it's just um it's just so unwieldy. I mean, the massive scale of what they do uh is just it's it's hard. It it's And what are the numbers, Kevin Fed? 700 million plus 700 billion, sorry, 700 billion plus in in uh sales uh GM topline GMBB uh last year. Compare that to Tik Tok shop where you hear people saying that they're they're Tik Tok millionaires and doing Tik Tok shop was was uh under 20 billion which is a weekend for Amazon. Uh and that just put that in 2.5 billion products across all Amazon's marketplaces worldwide. 2.5 billion products different products across all the marketplaces. It's it's and what's the percentage of those sellers and products that are native to to China? I mean not just manufactured Chinese brands. It's uh it's like 60 60 70% somewhere in there are Chinese-based um brands or are sellers uh worldwide. You brought up a fantastic point and it's a drum I want to beat and I think is very important. Um this needs to be I believe needs to be elevated to to a higher level because there's just there's just no recourse here right now for a lot of brands. They just, you know, if you're China based, for a such a customer centric company that that Amazon, they they beat the drum. You know, c customer is the most important. I get that. And this is me being a little snarky here, but when you go to those random letter brands and you click through, look at the brand, you click through to that second page, and then you scroll down and look at the name of their company and then the the address of that company. This is the Amazon.com, US-based, Seattlebased company. We all know that US-based with a lot of US-based sellers. Okay, you're trying to compete against folks that have a, you know, they're trying to kind of phonetically spell the the Mandarin, typically Mandarin Chinese name and then Mandarin characters in their address. Technically, we don't have to reach out to those customers. We don't have to reach out to those companies because Amazon handles it for us because that's, you know, the business that they built. Good for good for Bezos. The problem is what's the recourse there? Our lawyer actually has an that we the law firm that we work with had a case of in Pennsylvania, a private school company had a product from China was a shoddy product caught a a room on fire. Now they're like who do we sue here? Like this is just a crappy product. What I mean that's a dangerous situation. So I think your point is well taken and I agree with you. this needs to be elevated at some I'm not a big fan of of government intervention but there's got to be some policy in place saying you got to have a USbased entity entity not just reg you know they don't even really need anything right for a Chinese entity you just you're selling on Amazon you have to make sure you're who you say you are and the dollars you're sending is not being money laundered I get that my vote is just as you said it well you got to set up in some state you've got to set up a nexus you have to set up a business a business entity here where you are you exist with an address. You have a registered agent. Somebody where you can be served and and you're held accountable. There is no accountability at this point. You can false advertise. You can sell a crappy product. You can sell a knockoff product. You can sell an unsafe product. And what's the recourse? Almost nothing. Sure, your account goes down, but who gives a rip? We know the black hat side of things. There's there's software out there. They just they advertise it. Hey, we've got great software that will help you manage your flood of seller seller accounts. And it's so hard because you're logging in and sometimes you get blocked. Yeah. Because you're not I mean, how many times have we heard stories of people like setting up just can I set up a second account cuz they have two entities and Amazon like cuts them both off because like you're doing something that have hundreds of accounts and two or three of them they keep clean and the rest of them they do all their stuff on. They don't care if it gets shut down. So, they'll launch a new product with they'll send a thousand units in and they'll put 20 units in each of these uh accounts that are going to do some uh black hat crazy stuff and then they'll keep the clean account will have 100 units in it and then they know that those get it launched. They'll do whatever they got to do on those back bad ones and they get them shut down and then they'll just uh you the last man standing is the clean one and it stays and it it rides the wave of all the the bad stuff. But you're talking about too um the on the IP side. I had a podcast about a year ago or so uh with with a couple that was in the process this is like 2021 I believe their process of selling their business to Thrasio and it was it was closing day and the day that the money was going to get transferred 4 million bucks or something like that was going to get transferred to their account. They they had gone on and they were selling a kind of generic product. uh they were selling a they gone on Alibaba and found one of these iPhone charging stand kind of things and it would charge like six different IO iOS devices at once or something and they were selling that and doing very very well and they had one big competitor that was also based in New Jersey but what he ended up doing is they both were manufacturing at the same factory. He got together with the factory and they actually filed IP on the product in China and in the US which then blocked the other guys, the top seller, this couple uh from actually being able to place orders or or bring it in or sell it on Amazon. So the day that the closing was happening, their their listing went down uh for IP violation. the the day the money was supposed to be transferred, they then went back and and and Negotiating for Release of Product reached out to the guy and did did good went through all the channels and luckily they were able to get a hold of the guy and they just took the approach of like, "Hey, look, we're just a small family. You know, you're kind of messing with us. Why'd you do this?" He's like, "Well, I need protection. Uh this is an American guy um that or someone based in America that did it to him in conjunction with the factory." And in the end, he ended up ne uh negotiating with this guy to get him to release it. And the only way the guy would do it was was this if in the contract they put that this guy was a Muslim and they they put that if as long as when he went before Allah on judgment day that this wouldn't be held against him and they had to actually write that into the contract. The lawyer's like this has no legal binding, but okay, we'll we'll put it there anyway. Um and then he decid he he released it and actually that's fascinating. Yeah, it took him about 6 months. Uh and then the deal went through. Um, but it's it's crazy what goes on out there and the stories that you don't hear and the things that people are fighting. Um, and I believe Amazon, like you said, you know, when we Navigating Brand Protection in E-Commerce first started, it was easy. Just go find something, slap your name on it, and sell it. Now, you have to have that differentiation. You have to have that IP. You have to have that real true brand. Uh, and you have to go way beyond because everything else is just shortlived. Uh, you might have a a product that's gonna the window is even shorter now. like and especially with AI uh you can get stuff to market if something if you come out with something everybody's got the helium 10 everybody's got all these tools everybody's got the data you can see what's working you can jump on something and the Chinese especially will do that and they'll be out in a week or two weeks drop shipping like you said um but the dimminimous thing definitely is going to helps somewhat on that but I think it's going to be an ongoing battle and it's it's it it's almost like we need to have you know everybody talks about a cost and tacos and all these things for your PPC. Maybe maybe Amz Watchdog needs to start uh something called COP, the cop uh uh for for uh um u counterfeit operation protection or something like that. I don't know, come up with some sort of name uh that cop uh is your brain. Yeah, that's a great point. Is is to actually uh to monitor, you know, what what's your cop number? It needs to be 5%. I don't know. That's your target cop number. So what's cop? What's 5% of cop? I'm just making this up off the top of my head. That's that's 5% of your of your sales or of your bottom line of your contribution margin needs to go to to protection. And you just need to plan on this is a cost that is just a cost of doing business like you said. Uh and we just we're going to have to spend that to fight and build that into your margin uh and build that into your operations and and actually do it and or hire someone like I mean so how does like your company AMZ Watchdog how does that work? So, I come to you. Are most people coming to you when they have a problem and you're like going and fixing the problem? Or are they coming to you beforehand going, "Okay, I'm coming out with this new uh new iron or whatever. Um uh that's a robotic iron that irons your shirts and it jumps around from room to room in your house. I don't know. Some crazy stuff. I I got my IP on it. I'm about to launch on Amazon. I'm going to hire you now. You just guys keep a keep a watch and something pops up, you go you go knock them down. I don't want to mess with it." or is it more of a I've got a problem, help me solve it? Yeah, great question. Uh, yes. So, any of those things and it depends on where you are in the process. I mean, that that's the good news when we deal with we are not um lawyers, but the law firm we work with, they've been doing nothing but IP law since 1989. So, these dudes are they eat, sleep, breathe it. That's it. So, if you're early early days of actually filing patents, they're they're great. I have we have no cut of that. There's no that's not that's not our business but that's what they do. So they are a group that understands the Amazon space cuz a lot of times you know people look at you like you have three heads when even nowadays when you mention e-commerce it's still alarming to me Kevin people in my family when you know I bought it on Amazon is what they'll say and you say you know a third party seller you mean no Amazon sold it to me I'm like ah you know like most of the things sold people don't understand yeah understand it's me and you sitting in our underwear punching something on the computer uh they She bought it from. That's exactly right. And and and and I've had to school some I mean I won't go give names, but some folks in my family have like sort of proud of like returning stuff being dodgy and like oh I just sent them you know an empty box. I'm like dude that's me. That's my business. Like you don't understand how many of these are small companies. These are this is a great American story truly or Chinese as it were in some cases. So we we we we help at all aspects because Navigating E-Commerce Challenges and Innovations the the IP side of the house, the patent side of the house, the early that the the law firm can help with that. Other parts if a lot of times I've got a problem and it's reached critical mass, great, bring us in. Another part of what we do is is we've seen some people say look a brand says I can't do it anymore because it used to be manu I mean you again we're we're getting up there in age manufacturers manufactured distributors distributed retailers retailed sold stuff that's it pretty flat everybody got that deal so the margins are shrinking more and more now so much more of manufacturers are just kind of selling direct uh but what does sell direct actually mean okay great I'm selling direct But I'm selling on Amazon.com. I'm selling on my DTC site. I'm selling on walmart.com. I'm selling on Home Depot.com. I'm selling on lowe's.com, which are completely and fundamentally different from Home Depot and Lowe's, the retail side of the house, and I'm managing all of my retail channels, and I'm managing my distribution manufacturing. They're like, "Dude, I can't do this anymore." So, we're helping brands from when they say, "I can't run Amazon anymore. We'll do a full wholesale agency where we'll we'll run their Amazon side of the house for them." So people are coming to us early or even late in their life cycle saying I I don't even want to deal with I mean Easy Outlet's a good example. I don't want to deal with Amazon is just overwhelming. I dip my toe in the water and I was immediately p just punched and dragged down to the sharks and I was like wow that was a lot. You guys you do that. I I'm going to go invent more stuff. Cool. Or we've been at this Cody's brand he's been at retail and doing tens of mill he's done hundreds of millions of dollars at this point saying can't get traction man. Can you help here? So, we really run the gamut on on helping somebody out. If we can't help you, if I can't help you, I know a lot of folks in my network, Kevin King included, and otherwise, I can say, "Look, I I don't know what, you know, I I don't know if I can help you here, but we've been at this long enough. There's a great set of resources, phenomenal in the Amazon world. I know somebody that knows somebody that's going to be able to help you out there." So, the resources are there. I'm still super bullish on the Amazon side of the house. Competitive Strategies in Global Business Regardless of where you are, what problem you've got, fight for it. Do everything you can on the front end. If you say, "I tried everything." Ask the questions, reach out to us, reach out to somebody else and say, "Look, take this problem and look at it in a couple different ways. Look at a couple other angles. Where else could I where else could I defend this? Where else could I put put a put a motor around it? What else could I do to change this? Or what could I add to it to make it that much more competitive that's not so ubiquitous in the space?" And, you know, I think that's going to give you a competitive advantage because the dollars are huge that are out there right now. you see most of this these issues coming out of China or do you see it also stuff that's made in Turkey or Mexico or Colombia or Vietnam or something or is it primarily coming in because uh China because in China it's a the cult it's a cultural thing or or this this is no big deal to for them to do this a great question billion people and they're all just it's so hyperco competitive to try to get ahead they'll do whatever and it's they don't see it they don't really see it as cheating it tends to be it tends to be mostly China for the reason you mentioned it. There's a have you heard of the phenomenon uh tall poppy syndrome? No. So I think it I think uh it's known I've heard it a lot in New Zealand, Australia. I saw it a lot in Singapore. So the idea that why is America so full of like those innovators, the Steve Jobs, why is all coming kind of kind of from the US early in the conversation. You mentioned that like we're really good from the just startup like I don't give a rip. Just bootstrap this thing like yeah I'll take I I'll start a company sure. A lot of cultures around the world are like are you out of your mind? like no you can't do that when I was in doing a lot of work in Singapore that idea of like you there's no failure there like if I start something I need to make sure I'm going to see this through it it if I I cannot fail so when people do stick their neck out or get a little bit taller little tall poppy syndrome you're kind of like hacked down where like no no everybody's got to be here cool like we don't want that whole hey look at me I'm like I'm driving a better car and I've got a cool company and I'm like I'm going to I'm going to push the envelope here a little bit people like whoa sailor why don't we just slow down a So that sort of cultural zeitgeist is is the thing that goes on with with a number of countries. China tends to and this is very broadly speaking as you said in multiple billions of people. The culture tends to be I'm going to win at all cost. I don't give a rip. So it's a bit of a sliding scale of in fact to your point it's not even seen as as cheating. If you find another way to do something hey awesome pat you on the back like good on you. even like you know companies within China that's just what they do like hey cool awesome high five that's just the way it works so that's a main reason I think two big things a lot of stuff is culturally there's a difference and a lot of the manufacturing is right there so the human part of me says I get it Kevin because you're in a factory and you see these products you know you said it exactly right I mean we're in a the great Helium 10 podcast right for for for relatively short money that plant can hop on and on Amazon and go, they're selling how much per like wait what? I'm I'm I'm I'm going for scraps here in my country and I've got a dude that's out there selling $150,000 in revenue per month from this product. I'm sure going to find a way to knock this thing off and sell my own. I I get that. The the the capitalist in me is like hell yeah. So that now unfortunately has been exacerbated because Amazon has made it too easy. There's no good stop gaps there. I don't think I think Amazon has done a really good job of building an amazing platform, but it's kind of gone off the rails cuz it's too damn easy to cheat. It's too damn easy to obfuscate what's really going on and there's no checks or balances there. Hey, this thing's a million lumens. Cool story, bro. Like, there's guys out there doing stuff with just blatant lies with with crappy products. They're doing two $300,000 per month on that product in revenue. Yeah, the Chinese are lary of each other, too. I mean, you go to Canton Fair. You've been to Canton Fair and the you go look at the booth, the good stuff is not in the boo, not up on the wall or in the shelves in the booth. The good stuff is under the counter or it's back at the factory cuz they're like, "No way am I bringing uh this this out here cuz I'll just get knocked off by the other booths." So, it's it's it's prevalent and and you go to trade shows in the US, you just don't see this. How many times It's very rare you see no photos, don't take any photos. Like, you just don't have that problem. You go there, how many times are people like, "You can't take any photos here." What? Like because because you're exactly right like, "Hey man, there's something innovative. I'm gonna I'm gonna take this thing. I'm I'm gonna rip it off as a negative connotation." But at the end of the day, that's really what's going on. Like I I there's somebody with an edge. I mean, remember the story? Remember the the Of course you do, but those standup scooter things. What were those things called? Hoverboard. Hoverboards. Hoverboard. Yeah. Mark Cuban got involved in that one um for a while. like that got out of control and so huge so quickly. No one actually knew who owned the original patent for this thing because it went so fast and was ripped off so many times. It just became just sort of like kind of everybody. It became like public domain instantly. Someone actually invented that thing. And that's a pretty badass little Yeah. full disclosure. I think it's the technology from a guy kind of near and dear to my heart. I live in uh New Hampshire. Manchester, New Hampshire is where Dean Cayman is his name. He's a really huge inventor, but he made the Segway. So that's basically at the end of the day that gyroscopic kind of tech. I think that's probably his tech at the end of the day. He probably could have been like, "Bro, I, you know, I I built that thing." But China takes it and figures out how to knock that thing. But that thing was knocked off so quickly. It was amazing to see how fast and how rapidly. You're right. So the Chinese are kind of knocking each other off. I get it. You you had mentioned something earlier. Um we're seeing unbelievable success. And another thing people can do Utilizing TikTok for Brand Success um as a as a where else do you go? Amazon is a great channel for sure. But we are seeing and people roll their eyes a little bit but do not sleep on TikTok. And I know that's kind of in favor out of favor. Is that thing even going to exist in a few years? Personally, I think there's no way that can go anywhere. Someone's just going to acquire it. Might be Amazon. Wink wink. That's kind of my that that's the horse I'm backing. But we're seeing brands launching and getting traction on on Tik Tok incredibly fast. that helps bolster the Amazon sales does expand the possibility of kind of knockoffs and that kind of stuff, but it's a really amazing way to expand your offering to generate some more sales to generate some more profit so you can have some extra dollars as that war chest for as you so kindly gave me a tip of cop of of your uh you know that that protection part of your war chest cuz yeah, you're going to have to defend some stuff and I think this feels a little bit like older school manufacturing and older school tech. I mean, people used to have to worry about people going to knock my stuff off. Early on, it wasn't as big a deal. You didn't have the downward pressure of China. China was happy to manufacture that stuff, but they they woke up and I understand it. Just as I mentioned, I can say, man, we're set, Protecting Brands in E-Commerce you know, we're sending a million units of this thing every few years over to the US. How much are they making on this stuff? Someone's like, dude, we can't just keep making $2 a unit. They're making, you know, $10 per margin on this thing. So, the incentive is there. So, Tik Tok, we've seen we've seen crazy crazy results. We're helping brands launch there. Um, last success story we had 160% growth on of the brand. This is not like I went from $10 to, you know, 16 or 20 or or or 100 bucks. These are established brands that are doing multiple millions per year increase six figures on a monthly basis just on launching on the Tik Tok space. So I think that's another avenue that you can take that is Amazon adjacent because you can launch it over there and you can send you can send them a Tik Tok shop or you just mentioned it people still people still use you know Amazon as a search. It's kind of like a Google thing. Well I'm going to go see if it's on Amazon. The splash there is unbelievably big. So that's another way to not have to deal with a PPC machine or get yourself kind of launched. I'm bullish on that idea where you can launch and get some traction, get some sales, get some proof, la send them over to the Amazon side of the house. And that's kind of it's not free, but it's pretty inexpensive relatively speaking to get massive sales. Then you got some extra dollars, you get your boots in the ground, then you've got some money to defend your uh your product. So, what's it cost me to defend if I come to defend a product? Is it based on is an hourly rate? Is it a flat fee? Is it a percentage or something? What? So, when I come to AMZ Watchdog and hey, I got this this uh this easy plug or whatever. Uh I got a problem. I got to knock off 153 knockoffs or whatever. What am I looking at? Yeah, great question. Really? Yeah, thanks for asking. I wish I had a really super clear answer. Typically, it's how big the problem is, right? So, um we try to keep things relatively inexpensive, and that is relative because I'm a seller. I am a seller first. I cut my teeth on Amazon. I get this game. I know most people are bootstrappy and most people are startups. Um, typically you're in the 5 to 10k range is where we usually live in what we're doing. It depends on what you're doing though. It depends if someone's got like 10 people and it's a relatively easy product. They've got a utility patent and it's a clear cut and dry knockoff and we can kind of get them out of there using, you know, going through Amazon's back end, the Apex, their their patent program. That's that's pretty cheap. We we we do that as low as four or 5,000 bucks. If someone says, "Hey, I'm having a hard time in this space. I I'm established. I can't do this." Like the the the flashlight case, that's in the multiple tens of thousands of dollars. But the upside is, hey, now I can actually launch my product and I can take my brand that should be doing should be doing two or three million dollars a year in the platform, not 300 grand. That's a different conversation, right? Because that becomes literally legal activities and that becomes a federal case and that's a whole whole set of things that go along with that. So, usually though for somebody starting out, it's in the it's in the thousands of dollars. It's not a massive massive massive spend, but it really depends on what you're looking to do. It's so hard because we range from really small startup guys to wellestablished, you know, 2030 million retail brands that are that are riding the struggle bus. So, it's it's a broad range, but I wish I could give you a little bit more clear of an answer, but hopefully that and there'll be more if you have to go to to court or litigation, like in some cases where you actually file suit. So, there's additional costs on the lawyer side for that. The re one one note on that though and it's not always guaranteed but usually there is recourse there unlike in the Amazon space only if you go through seller central you can get stuff taken down and the listing kind of goes away or they have to fix the title if they've stolen your name they've got to fix the title they've got to get new images and not not have your stolen images. If you do go the legal route a lot of times there is dollars that come back from that because you you have been damaged and that isn't you said look this is false advertis there are rules in this country and there are rules that you have to follow and there are penalties if you don't follow through on that. So, the good news is if you end up having to go the legal route, not us because we're not lawyers, but they we hand you over to the our legal team that you work with, those guys, a lot of times the stuff that the the accounts are taken down, the the the damages are there. Then there's a negotiated out, there's a couple bucks to come back. So, you can recover some of the dollars and a lot of people don't realize that or have been told, "Oh, it's not worth fighting. You can't do that." You absolutely can and you absolutely should do that because there there is money to be had there. You have been damaged. You can't. Our stance is people can't keep getting away with this. And right now, sellers move with impunity. And I I'm really tired of that. So, put your put your foot down and if you've got that stuff and you know, if you've been told before, oh, you can't do it. No, it's too expensive. Talk to us. Re reach out reach out to somebody. But but reach out. Ask the question because we have found time and time and time again, the legal team is exceptionally good. Stand for what you what's right. Do the right thing. I'm all for capitalism and making money, but do it fairly. Like, we want to level that playing field. I'm And I'm Look, I'm all for Chinese sellers selling a hell of a lot of good on you. I mean, that's great, but don't do it unfairly and don't don't cheat it and and don't you're stealing money. You're stealing money from people and you're lying. Don't do that. That's that's never cool in any way. So, Chris, it's Supporting Amazon Sellers Through AMZ Watchdog Amzwatchdog.com. Is that correct? You got it. Amzwatchdog.com. Well, hey, I really appreciate you coming on today and uh and sharing and uh glad someone's out there taking a stand uh for the sellers and coming at it from a point of view of understanding what it what the pain feels like as a seller to to go through this. So, uh appreciate you, man, for for doing that. I appreciate the time as well and I keep keep doing the the the good work out there cuz you're an unbelievable resource to the community. It's great to see that the newsletter is invaluable to us for sure. I mean, I I I don't care how long I've been at this game, every day I'm like, "Oo, that that's cool. that that that's some good stuff. So, yeah, we want to put our flag in the ground truly. We want to help out brands. I'm still still bullish just as you are in the Amazon opportunity. It's ne never it hasn't been better. Is it tougher? Sure. But there's things that you can do. Fight for it. And we're we're glad to be the guys to be out there kind of taking the slings and arrows, but we're willing to do it because it's it's that important to us. So, I appreciate the time. No problem. Like Chris said, all the big brands are having to devote part of their budget to whack-a-ole. Uh because if you got something worth copying and something that's really good, it's just part of doing business where people are going to knock you off. There's certain things you can do like we discussed to uh to fight that. Um but I think you're going to have to start just building that into your budget that we're going to have to have a division or a partner like like uh his company AMZ Watchdog that will actually help you protect yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode and got something from it. We'll be back again next week with another episode of the AM Kevin's Words of Wisdom PM podcast. In the meantime, remember, what you put your focus to is where you will go. What you put your focus to is where you will go and what you will become. We'll see you again next week. Take care.