Reclaiming the Buy Box from seventeen unauthorised sellers

Almost half of the brand's own sales were being made by other people. Seventeen sellers had acquired stock through distributors and were listing it below the brand's price, which meant they held the Buy Box roughly half the time — and when a shopper clicked “Add to cart”, the order was fulfilled by someone with no incentive to protect the brand.

The damage compounded. Old and mishandled stock produced one-star reviews on the brand's listing, dragging the hero ASIN to 4.1. The brand's own advertising was paying for clicks that converted into someone else's sale. And the constant undercutting made the brand's actual price look like a premium nobody had justified.

Enforcement only works when supply is fixed too, so we did both.

• Only genuine violations reported — counterfeit, materially different and damaged goods, documented with test buys. A reseller with authentic stock is not an infringement, which is why the distribution work below did the real job.
• Distribution audit — the leak traced to two distributors whose agreements had no marketplace clause; both were renegotiated.
• Price and MAP policy that can actually be enforced, communicated to every remaining partner in writing.
• Listing control — images, A+ and variation structure locked down so the listing represents the brand regardless of who holds the Buy Box that hour.

Buy Box share went from 54% to 97%, revenue grew 70%, and the average selling price rose 28% because nobody is racing the brand to the bottom.

The rating recovered from 4.1 to 4.5 once every order shipped from the brand's own inventory rather than from grey-market stock of unknown age. The advertising economics changed by the same mechanism: the account now converts nearly every click it pays for into its own sale rather than into a third party's.