In yet another sweeping change, Amazon announces yet another regulation and imposition on their Sellers; this time, in the Health & Personal Care category.
If you are one of thousands of Sellers who create supplements or over-the-counter medicines, this will impact you in a significant way.
Here’s the official notification from Amazon:
Dear Seller,
We would like to inform you about a change in our policy in Seller Central. Starting February 15, 2017, all sellers selling in Health and Personal Care category will be required to list the ingredients for all over-the-counter medicines and dietary supplements in the Inventory File Template.
Additionally, images of ingredients and/or nutritional information listed on product packaging should be uploaded as secondary product images on product detail pages.
We are providing you until February 15, 2017, to update your existing listings so they adhere to this new policy. If you do not update your existing listings on or before February 15, 2017, they will be removed.
This reminds me of the time a few years back when 3rd party marketplace sites started requiring Sellers to include a secondary image of the yellow “Energy Label” sticker for all TVs.
Personally, I can see how this information could be important to the buyer. After all, when you’re in the store you’d probably pick up the bottle and read the ingredients before making a purchase decision unless you already knew exactly what you wanted.
How about you? Is this a good thing or another over-reaching regulation by big business and big government?