How to get a Latin American brand ready to sell on Amazon USA

Before you start: does your product have room on Amazon USA?

Amazon in the United States is a huge, highly competitive market. Before opening your account, it's worth answering three questions with data, not gut feeling:

• Is there demand? Search for what you sell the way a customer would in English, and look at how many products show up, what they cost and how many reviews the top results have. Tools like Helium 10 help estimate search volume by keyword.
• Do the numbers work? From the selling price, subtract product cost, international freight, import duties, Amazon fees (the referral fee and the FBA fee), storage and the ad spend you'll need to get started. If the margin is too tight, it's better to know now.
• What sets you apart? In almost every category someone is already selling something similar. Your story, your origin, an ingredient, a design or a different format is what will make someone pick your product out of twenty.

Company, payments and taxes

To open a seller account in Seller Central you'll be asked for an ID, an international credit card, company information and an account where Amazon can pay you in dollars.

Many Latin American brands set up an LLC in the United States because it makes it easier to open a bank account there and keep invoicing in order. It's not required: you can also sell with your home-country company and get paid through an international payment service that works with Amazon. What makes sense depends on your tax situation, so make this decision with an accountant who knows both countries.

During registration, Amazon runs a tax interview to identify whether you're a foreign individual or company. As for sales tax, Amazon calculates and collects it in the states where it acts as a marketplace facilitator, but check it with your accountant before you start selling anyway.

Register your trademark in the United States

This is the step that gets put off the most and regretted the most. To get into Amazon Brand Registry you need a trademark that's registered or pending at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A trademark registered only in your country isn't enough.

Brand Registry unlocks things that make a real difference in sales:

• A+ Content (the image and text modules below the listing).
• Brand Store, your own store inside Amazon.
• Sponsored Brands and other ad formats with your logo.
• More control over your listings and tools to report anyone copying your product.
• Access to programs like Amazon Vine, which helps you get your first reviews.

Start the process as soon as possible: it can take months and you want it underway before you launch.

Product, labeling and compliance

What works in your country can't always be sold as is in the United States. Check:

1. Your category's regulations. Food, supplements and cosmetics have FDA requirements (registration and labeling rules). Electronics, toys and kids' products have their own standards. Some Amazon categories require approval before you can sell.
2. An English label. With the information your category requires, US units of measurement and the importer's details.
3. Barcodes. Amazon asks for a GTIN (for example, a GS1 UPC) for each product, with some exceptions. If you use FBA, you'll also label each unit with Amazon's barcode.
4. Packaging. Design it for a long trip and for Amazon's fulfillment centers: it shouldn't break or leak, and it has to meet their prep rules.

Logistics: how your product reaches the customer

Most brands coming from abroad use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon): you send your inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers and they take care of storing it, shipping it and handling returns. It's the simplest way to get Prime shipping, which weighs heavily on buying decisions in the United States.

What you need to sort out first:

• Importing. Amazon doesn't act as the importer. You need an importer of record (your LLC or a third party), a customs broker in the United States and a freight forwarder to move the cargo.
• First shipment. Start with a quantity that lets you learn without tying up too much capital. Running out of stock mid-launch costs you rankings that are hard to win back.
• Insurance. Past a certain sales level, Amazon requires commercial liability insurance. Keep it on your radar.

The listing: written for people searching in English

A good listing isn't a translation. It comes from understanding how your customer searches and what they need to read before buying. Here's how we build it:

1. Keyword research in English. We find the words people actually use and how many searches they get, and we look at what competitors who already sell are doing.
2. Title. Brand, what the product is and its most searched attributes, without keyword stuffing.
3. Bullets. Five reasons to buy, leading with the benefit, not the feature.
4. Images. The main one on a white background, as Amazon requires, and then use, size, ingredients or materials, comparison and the brand story.
5. A+ Content and Brand Store, once you have Brand Registry.

A listing that doesn't convert makes all the advertising that follows more expensive. That's why we work on it before investing heavily in Amazon Ads.

Launch and advertising

With the listing ready and the stock in Amazon's fulfillment centers, the most measured part begins. For the launch we recommend:

• Sponsored Products from day one, with a clear structure: campaigns to discover new keywords, campaigns to scale the ones that already sell and campaigns to defend your brand.
• Reviews the right way. Amazon Vine or the automatic review request. Never paid or incentivized reviews: Amazon detects them and penalizes them.
• Weekly review. Bids based on profitability, keywords that spend without selling moved to negatives, and tracking the organic rank of every important keyword.
• Measure real profit product by product, with every cost included. Tools like Sellerboard are built for that.

In our experience managing more than 2 million dollars on Amazon, the brands that start best are the ones that arrive with the groundwork done: a registered trademark, clear numbers and a listing built for the customer over there.