{"id":3154,"date":"2014-08-05T08:40:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T08:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.repricerexpress.com\/?p=3154"},"modified":"2025-10-28T14:22:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:22:47","slug":"parallel-imports-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.repricerexpress.com\/parallel-imports-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Parallel Imports Amazon: What Sellers Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>You may have had a lemonade stand when you were a child, honing your business skills from an early age. Or perhaps you ventured into your own business at a later stage in life, having to make up lost time. Either way, as an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.repricerexpress.com\/how-to-sell-on-amazon\/\">Amazon seller<\/a>, you understand that the rules of business are strict and rather unforgiving, especially when it comes to governmental matters. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of these is importing the products you sell into the different countries serviced by the various Amazon marketplaces, especially when it concerns items with someone else\u2019s brand name on them (e.g. a Sony TV versus a coat rack you made yourself).<\/p>\n<p>Just like recording artists aren\u2019t too happy about you taping their concerts and selling it for profit \u2014 as opposed to paying a royalty for their records and legally selling it that way \u2014 manufacturers of other goods won\u2019t be terribly pleased if you get your hands over their goods and import it without their knowledge. This practice is called parallel importation, and it\u2019s something we here at RepricerExpress feel deserves some exploring.<\/p>\n<h2>Breaking Down Parallel Importation: What You Need to Know<\/h2>\n<p>In a nutshell, a parallel import is an item that\u2019s brought into another country where the seller of the product hasn\u2019t sought permission from the trademark owner. For example, if you\u2019re selling Nike trainers on your Amazon page and you haven\u2019t gotten permission from Nike \u2014 the owner of the Nike trademark \u2014 and you ship a pair of shoes to someone in another country, you\u2019re selling a parallel import.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s important to note that a parallel import does <strong>not<\/strong> include counterfeit goods, like bootleg copies of things like DVDs or electronic products. Parallel imports are only goods that are genuine and authentic, like the aforementioned Nike shoes (as opposed to you taking a pair of Walmart shoes, stripping their brand logo off it, and replacing it with a Nike swoosh).<\/p>\n<h2>How This Applies to Amazon Sellers<\/h2>\n<p>Reading this, you may be thinking of some counterexamples like books or magazines. It\u2019s fairly widely known that published written works aren\u2019t always the same in each country they\u2019re sold in. Take the first Harry Potter book, which was called <em>Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u2019s Stone<\/em> for the British version and <em>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone<\/em> for the U.S. version; as well, you can look at magazines like <em>Top Gear<\/em> or <em>Cosmopolitan<\/em> for further cross-Atlantic differences. All three examples are possible examples of parallel imports if you take one version of the product and then sell it in a different country without the trademark owner\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n<p>Further, this would definitely be parallel importation if you took the product at the cheaper price, sold it for the higher price, and then imported it without permission. For a really clear-cut example of this, look at Canadian booksellers selling to fellow Canadians. Because the very same copy of the book is sold for much cheaper in the United States, with both their currencies of roughly the same value, a Canadian seller would be practicing parallel importation if they crossed the border, loaded up on American books for, say, $5 each, and then turned around and sold them at $10 to Canadian sellers.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s obvious where the benefit lies with parallel importation: the seller, especially when dealing with high-priced goods like electronics and jewellery, can make a tidy profit and compete more strongly against other Amazon sellers because they\u2019re not abiding by the same rules. As well, trademark owners may have very strict rules in place about how, where and for how much their products have to be sold for when it comes to importing, which means you may be up against a strong legal wall if you attempt this.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon has two different options in place when it comes to parallel imports: obey the trademark owner\u2019s decision to either be able to import their product or not, or do your own thing if the trademark owner\u2019s rights have been exhausted. Either way, it will require you to research each brand and manufacturer to see what the rules are about selling and importing a specific item, and it\u2019s not something you can go about ad-hoc. If you\u2019re unsure about where you stand, Amazon advises you to seek legal counsel just to be on the safe side. The last thing you want to do is get caught with your pants down and risk getting a severe cease-and-desist letter, as it\u2019s just not worth it.<\/p>\n<p>After all, you\u2019ve worked plenty hard to get where you are today, and this is just the kind of thing that shouldn\u2019t bring you down.<\/p>\n<p>Parallel importation is just one of the many issues you\u2019ve got to educate yourself on if you\u2019re going to be a successful Amazon seller, as you\u2019ve moved well past the innocent days of your childhood lemonade stand. To make life easier for you, one thing you don\u2019t have to sweat at all is RepricerExpress\u2014with our repricing software allowing you to competitively price all your (legally sold!) goods to any Amazon marketplace. And just to sweeten the pot even more, our repricing software is available <a title=\"RepricerExpress Amazon repricing tool free trial\" href=\"https:\/\/dashboard.repricer.com\/register\/do\/repricer?utm_source=rex-blog&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=rex-to-repricer-registration&amp;utm_activity=take-action\">free for the first 14 days<\/a> you use it without limitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may have had a lemonade stand when you were a child, honing your business skills from an early age. Or perhaps you ventured into your own business at a later stage in life, having to make up lost time. Either way, as an Amazon seller, you understand that the rules of business are strict [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amazon","category-fba","category-tips"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Parallel Imports Amazon: What Sellers Need to Know<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Parallel imports on Amazon are something every third party seller and FBA merchant needs to be aware of.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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