Business Challenge
T. Marzetti’s Flatout Flatbread is a grocery aisle staple, but this CPG brand faced a common challenge on Amazon—retail arbitrage. Selling DTC was cost-prohibitive for the brand, but unscrupulous Amazon vendors were buying Flatout products off grocery store shelves and reselling on Amazon with a markup. And without refrigeration and carefully managed supply lines, these vendors were sometimes sending Amazon customers moldy or rotten bread—threatening the brand’s reputation, particularly in rural or new markets.
Solution
The first step in protecting the brand on Amazon was leveraging the platform’s safeguards, such as registering with the Amazon Brand Registry and reporting unauthorized sellers. In addition to sending and monitoring hundreds of Amazon support tickets, we identified trustworthy vendors with the proper logistic systems who could fulfill orders from individual buyers on the brand’s Amazon listings. Then it was a matter of growing a base of happy customers—we optimized all Flatout product listings to adhere to brand standards and put an Amazon ad strategy in place to drive sales (which we continue to manage).
Results
By taking quick action and addressing retail arbitrage from all angles (Amazon, competitor, consumer), Flatout Flatbread saw immediate results. Plus our strategy solved the issue of selling directly to the consumer without driving up retail prices and creating an undue burden on the company.
One month after implementing the new listings and fulfillment realignment, Flatout’s Amazon revenue jumped 235%. To date, several product ASINs rank on the first page of results for the keyword “flatbread,” and have been selected as “Amazon’s Choice” products.
