What is a MAP price product?
MAP
Why is it important?
How could it kind of guarantee you profit
when selling on Amazon?
Hi, my name is Beau Crabill
leading expert for selling products on Amazon
And if you've ever heard of a thing called a MAP price deal
Maybe you've got it from your supplier
or from your distributor
or if you've never sold on Amazon before
it's very important for you to understand about MAP
So, let me actually kinda
I'll take the camera right now and explain to you
about, you know, the importance of this
So let's say we got this JBL speaker
Oh, here's my book, The Secrets to Selling on Amazon
If you wanna learn about selling on Amazon for very cheap
go to beaucrabill.com/book
But the JBL speaker, if you walk into Best Buy
Let's see if you can actually see that
Yeah
Target, Macy's, wherever they sell these things, right?
They're probably all selling at the same exact price
If you see a new TV that comes out
if you see a new video game that comes out
many products sell the same exact price at all retail stores
I don't know if you've ever asked the question
Like, okay, why doesn't Walmart sell this video game for $59.89
instead of $59.99?
Or why don't they just drop a dollar on their Apple products
or this, this, and that?
And it's because there's a MAP pricing on that
which stands for the minimum advertised price
Practically, it's an agreement enforced by the manufacturer
the brand owner
And the agreement is shared between
anyone distributing the product
and anyone retailing the product
If you're on Amazon, you are a retailer
So, now, that can be very, very cool
to hear as an Amazon seller
Oh my gosh, I'm going to sell a product and it
in some sort of way, legally cannot be under a certain price
Now, there's two types of MAP price deals
There's minimum advertised price for a certain time period
and then there's MAP price products for
you either call it infinity or forever until
that product is still there
So, a lot of things to look out for
Because yes, I've sold some products that have MAP
and it's amazing
You don't have to worry about it
you don't do anything and you're done
It's kinda the beauty of it all
And you definitely should try to get into those types of deals
Call up your supplier and say, hey
do you have any MAP price products?
If you have no idea what I'm talking about
this is also extremely important
if you ever saw anything on Amazon
because MAP price products can definitely be risky
if you're dealing with a supplier that's saying it's MAP-ed
but they don't have the right agreements in place
So if you're going to get into a MAP price product
first thing I suggest doing is making sure that either
you have had some sort of communication with
the actual brand owner
or there's some representative from the brand owner
communicating with your distributor that's having
a 3-way communication with you, the distributor
and the account representative
Because any distributor can say, oh yeah
this is a MAP price product, and send you some bogus agreement
or not even send you over any agreement
So make sure there's some communication with everyone there
And in that communication
you should bring up the question saying
how will you handle if the MAP goes down?
Because, you may think, okay, is it a legally binding contract?
Kind of
So Amazon does not, they do not monitor it
Amazon's not the police
Amazon says, hey, we are just a platform to sell on
we are not the police here
If you've ever seen a product on Amazon that shows like, hey
it's in, see price in cart
'Cause sometimes Amazon literally themselves won't break MAP
So, because that Amazon is not a police
they're not a monitor of this
Now, in physical retail stores, there's actually
in a certain way, someone monitoring it
It's actually people who own the real estate of the stores
So if you walk into like a strip mall
there's actually, if they break certain rules
and if they don't apply by, like the manufacturer's rules
they actually will evict them
So that's actually the thing
with Amazon, they don't really care about it
So, the second thing that you definitely want to happen
is make sure you have some sort of an agreement
if you're doing MAP, right?
If your suppliers says, hey, you know, there's this
And make sure that you sign it
Make sure a representative from the brand
or the brand owner themselves signed it
Make sure the distributor signs it
Also, the other question that you should ask
you know, step #3, is communicate with your vendor and ask them
well, who else has the rights to go
wholesale these products out?
Because another beautiful thing about a MAP price product is that
if it is MAP-ed, meaning that it's
there's a minimum advertised price
It's a deal with it
If you're working with a decent supplier
they definitely have an exclusive deal with that
And the brand owner knows exactly who has it as a distributor
I actually had some random person call me up
I was driving down from LA to San Diego
had my car on auto-pilot
And I get this phone call from
And the reason why I picked it up is 'cause
it had a zip code that I, or an area code that I, like knew of
that I knew would not be, like someone
Like, they would only be a supplier calling
And they called me up, it's actually the brand owner saying
hey, do you want to cut out X, Y, and Z middleman
who is helping distribute his MAP price deal
and just buy from us directly?
Right away, I was like, two good things
It was very confusing for me
I was like, wait a second, that's good
I can go buy directly and get a way cheaper cost
And also, well, they wanted me to actually become like
kinda distribute it and just do it myself
But then 2, that also has
put a lot of fear into me, saying, oh crap
And this is a product I was about to put a lot of money into
I was having this communication with the distributor guy
I said, hey, let's get this in place
And the thing that came out of my mind
saying, oh my gosh, well, this distributor has no means at all
of, you know, of controlling us
Because literally, the brand owner's calling me up
So then, you know, with us, we communicated
And now, we're kinda just working with the brand owner
because we're like, hey, we can just handle this all
So anyway, long story short
MAP stands for the minimum advertised price
That means you pretty much cannot go sell below it
If you're trying to go
if you're looking at a product and someone has broken MAP
which, maybe you came across this video 'cause
you have that going on
I'm not gonna tell you to go violate it
If someone already else has
have strong communication with your suppliers
You can't really get kicked off of Amazon for it
The brand owner could definitely, you know, go out and say, hey
can you kick them off our listing?
That could happen
But definitely don't violate, play with the rules
Just, you know, no one likes to someone who breaks the rules
But anyway, if you have any comments at all
any questions about MAP, comment them down below
If you wanna check out more information about selling on Amazon
you can definitely, you know, subscribe to this YouTube channel
Comment any questions that you have
and I'll see you in the next video