Dear Handmade Selling Partners,
In 2023, Handmade communicated exciting future changes to discoverability and the technical project that Handmade was embarking on to make those improvements. Last week, Handmade began that effort and it resulted in many findings that prevented Handmade Selling Partners from being able to edit existing Handmade ASINs or list new Handmade ASINs. We thank you for your patience as we attempted to resolve the cases that were brought to our attention and we greatly appreciate you surfacing them. Handmade has halted progress on the project since discovering these impacts and is addressing them internally before any additional changes are implemented. We ensure all Handmade Selling Partners will receive communication prior to future changes to the Handmade listing experience.
What is changing?
We are beginning a multi-year project to reclassify existing Handmade products from GUILD product types to standard product types; for example, a lamp within the GUILD_HOME product type would move to the LAMP product type. A product type refers to a set of products that share similar attributes. Don’t worry— although we are reclassifying your existing Handmade products to standard product types, your existing Handmade products will remain within Amazon’s Handmade category, even after this change.
Why does this matter?
Reclassifying Handmade products into standard product types enables the following features:
• Handmade products will appear when customers search and browse in standard categories. This is one of the top feature requests from our Handmade community. As a reminder, Handmade products are already discoverable in all products search.
• Handmade products will receive enhanced detail page content including larger product images and category-specific detail page features.
• Handmade products will appear in Seller Central’s Listing Quality Dashboard (LQD), which you can use to improve your Handmade products’ listing quality.
These features may help improve discoverability of your Handmade products and increase sales.
Actions Handmade Selling Partners can take now:
As part of the reclassification of existing Handmade products from GUILD product types to standard product types, when creating a new listing or editing an existing listing or variation, you will be required to provide a Product ID or to request a Product ID Exemption.
Product IDs are part of a system of unique identifiers called Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs). The specific GTIN required varies by category. The requirements of each category, including exceptions and exemptions where available, are summarized in the table on the Product ID (GTIN) requirements by category.
The following are the most common GTINs used to create Amazon catalog pages:
• Universal Product Code (UPC)
• European Article Number (EAN)
• If you tried to add your products via a feed and received a listing error, use Add a product to view the approval requirements for the ASIN that returned the error.
If your product does not have a product ID or GTIN, you can request a GTIN exemption.
GTIN exemption is by brand and product type, so you will only need to submit a GTIN exemption request once per product type or once if Brand Registered. Please note, at this time Handmade uses Guild Product Types but in the future when Handmade migrates to Amazon standard product types, you may have to request an exemption again.
You can learn about requesting a GTIN exemption here.
While listing your product and filling in attributes, select “I do not have a Product ID”. If you do not have a Product ID and receive an error stating “GTIN exemption is required”, select apply now.
You can verify if you have been exempt by reviewing your Applications Dashboard in Seller Central.
Yeah and many of us called that BS out as being just getting rid of Handmade.
The fact that creating/editing listings got broken when the change was finally implemented makes me seriously not believe...
Congratulations priscilla et al _amazon... the end has finally come to Handmade because now there is "nothing" making an ASIN of "handmade" any different than any general crap sold on Amazon.
Hi Priscilla -
I understand this is a multi-year project, but I'm wondering if it's possible to request this category reassignment early (ie: immediately)?
Lately I've been creating new listings in the non-handmade product type category and prefer the layout of the listings better than the handmade layout... however I don't want to lose my product sales ranking and reviews for my current handmade ASINS.
Thank you for any help you can provide!
ETA: I opened a case with seller support if that helps. Case #15864217211.
I saw the same thing in my store, 3 days of BACK TO NORMAL sales, then back to nothing. @Rose_Amazon@priscilla_amazon PLEASE put my listings PERMANENTLY in this more FAVORABLE SITUATION. How do we get back to 2023 Quarter 1? Things were looking up WAY back then.
Since we are being integrated into the main catalogue, will this update allow us to have both an FBA and FBM conditions(?) without having two different SKUs (listings)?
If you open a case, they will tell you that you should add A+ content, that this is what is going to REVIVE your previous best sellers that are now invisible. They don't mention that no one will ever SEE your A+ content as your ASINS never show up in search.
I know everything is "happening" in Q4.
Is that October 1 or December 31?