SUMMARY:

Jon Groza, intellectual property attorney at KJK, discusses why B2B manufacturers fail to protect their brands online, particularly on Amazon. Key issues include unauthorized resellers causing price erosion, channel conflict, counterfeit products, and consumer safety risks.

Despite 70% of manufacturers having unauthorized sellers (with 70% not knowing who they are), companies hesitate due to fear of enforcement complexity, Amazon backlash, or budget concerns.

Groza emphasizes that brands have enforceable IP rights and can successfully reclaim control through monitoring and cease-and-desist programs without necessarily resorting to litigation.

FAQ:

Who is Jon Groza and what does he do?
Jon Groza is a partner at KJK, a full-service business law firm, where he runs the intellectual property and e-commerce practice. His firm specializes in brand enforcement, helping manufacturers—particularly those with premium products—shut down unauthorized resellers and protect their brands by enforcing their intellectual property rights across various e-commerce platforms.

What is the scope of the unauthorized seller problem?
Research from ENCIBA found that almost 70% of B2B manufacturers have their products sold on Amazon, and over 70% don’t know who these sellers are. This represents a significant loss of brand control, with some major brands having hundreds of unauthorized resellers selling their products on platforms like Amazon.

What are the real costs of not protecting your brand online?
The costs include: retail price erosion (unauthorized sellers compete primarily on price), channel conflict (authorized distributors see lower prices online during negotiations), brand reputation damage, incorrect or fraudulent product information, counterfeit products reaching customers, consumer safety risks, and opportunity costs from lost revenue and profit when manufacturers aren’t controlling their own sales.

What’s an example of how bad this problem can get?
Milwaukee Tools was cited as an example where one of their top-selling products generates over $1 million annually on Amazon with almost 50 different resellers—many with names like “Joe’s Discount Store” or “Discount Express Hardware.” These unauthorized sellers create pricing chaos and brand control issues, with products potentially being diverted inventory, items “falling off the back of a truck,” or goods purchased on sale and resold.

Why should consumers care about unauthorized sellers?
Consumer safety is a major concern. Products like power tools, motorcycle helmets, batteries, or food items that aren’t stored, shipped, or handled properly can be dangerous. There have been documented cases, including a Wall Street Journal article, about fraudulent motorcycle helmets sold through Amazon that resulted in deaths. Additionally, warranties may not be valid if products aren’t purchased through authorized channels.

What intellectual property rights do manufacturers have even without patents?
Even if a product isn’t patented or patentable, manufacturers still have enforceable rights in their copyrights and trademarks. These IP rights provide the legal foundation for shutting down unauthorized sellers who are using the brand’s logos, product images, or trademarks without permission.

Why don’t companies protect their brands online?
According to a LinkedIn poll, the top reason is that companies don’t feel they have a way to enforce or police unauthorized sellers (number one answer), followed by lack of executive alignment. Other hesitations include: not knowing where to begin, not understanding their IP rights, fear of antagonizing Amazon, concerns about distribution channel relationships, budget constraints, and worry about antitrust counterclaims or litigation.

Will taking action against unauthorized sellers antagonize Amazon?
No. Groza emphasizes that there’s a way to work in conjunction with Amazon rather than getting “sideways” with them. Amazon is more receptive when consumer safety issues are involved. His firm maintains a good working relationship with Amazon while helping clients address unauthorized seller problems, and many clients successfully enforce their rights without damaging their Amazon relationship.

How has the government’s position on Amazon’s liability changed?
The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently classified Amazon as a distributor, meaning they could be held responsible or liable for products sold through their marketplace channel—not just products Amazon buys wholesale. This gives more weight to consumer safety arguments and provides additional leverage for brand protection efforts.

Is this problem limited to Amazon?
No. While Amazon is the most visible platform, unauthorized selling occurs across all third-party marketplaces including Alibaba, Walmart.com, and eBay. Each platform has different approaches for addressing the issue, but the fundamental problem of unauthorized resellers exists across the e-commerce ecosystem.

Is brand enforcement just “whack-a-mole” where shutting down one seller means another pops up?
While some new sellers may emerge, doing something is better than doing nothing. Companies can make significant progress in recapturing the buy box and shutting down unauthorized sellers. Often, what appears to be many different sellers may actually be the same entity operating multiple storefronts. Additionally, resellers communicate in chat rooms and forums—when they see enforcement actions being taken seriously, it sets an example that deters others.

Does brand enforcement require expensive litigation?
No. Companies can commit to monitoring and cease-and-desist programs that don’t always result in litigation. When litigation does become necessary (typically for particularly disruptive resellers), these cases are usually resolved fairly early through settlement rather than lengthy court battles. The investment doesn’t need to approach advertising budget levels to be effective.

Why is brand protection as important as advertising?
Groza argues that in the e-commerce age, your brand may be even more important than patentable intellectual property. Using Coca-Cola as an example, while the formula has changed many times over decades, it’s the brand itself that holds the value. If you’re investing in advertising and promotion but not protecting where and how your products are sold, you’re undermining that investment.

What does successful brand enforcement look like?
Success means: protecting profit margins in your online store, recapturing the buy box on marketplaces, ensuring authorized distributors can compete fairly, maintaining brand reputation, guaranteeing product quality and safety, validating warranties for customers, and creating a deterrent effect where unauthorized sellers think twice before listing your products.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome everyone to Friday 15 with Master B2B. My name is Brian Beck. I’m here with Andy Hoar, my co-host on this intergalactic podcast. Welcome Andy to Friday 15.

Hey, good to be here.

We got an interesting topic today. A little departure from what we usually talk about, but nonetheless very important topic, and I know you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. So I should be more more Brian Beck today and less Andy just to alert our affiliates, right? Affiliates. Yes. Do we have affiliates? Excellent. Well, everyone, before we get going, of course, as usual, we need to do our the breaking news. Everybody, look at this. Andy, you found this. AI can now pass the hardest chartered or certified financial analyst test. The CFA test, Andy, is one of the hardest things any financial professional has to take, right? And this is something that, you know, people spend a thousand hours, several years, studying for. However, new research shows that AI can now pass the test, even the toughest one, in just minutes. This is fascinating, Andy. What What does this signal to you?

If you’ve got a white collar, watch out because And you do, but we say this a lot. It doesn’t mean it’s wise. It does mean it’s really smart. Not necessarily wise. And I think of the analogy of like a child prodigy, right? Um, and and by the way, this the research shows that most child prodigies end up not doing very well later in life. They’re very good at the beginning. You know, they impress everybody. We have all this hope that they’re going to, you know, cure cancer. And a lot of times they end up not doing that because they’re not really capable of evolving. They excel at one thing. They get locked into that one thing and they can’t you know reinvent themselves later like we all have to in our lives, right? This could be different though because you know Chad GPT these AI engines are constantly evolving and so by definition they evolve that way. But I don’t know if you saw the article in the Wall Street Journal I think it was this morning about the amount of money being spent on AI. It is unbelievable. People are likening it now to this the boom of the dot era. Not not the dot companies, but the infrastructure around the I had a couple of interesting notes here. Facebook is going to spend $600 billion on AI within the next three years. Um there’s a company called Coreweave which was a backwater company that’s building on these data centers. It’s now worth more than Target. Wow.

And uh the last one is interesting. This is where people are concerned about this bubble is that OpenAI just uh committed to a contract to spend $60 billion a year with Google. Oh my gosh. Oracle, sorry, Oracle. And Oracle’s like, well, this is amazing. A guaranteed $60 billion. The only problem is right now OpenAI is making $1 billion a year in revenue. So, they got to get that number way up or they got to get the other number way down or there’s going to be this divergence that no be able to be explained. That’s just one company. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, one thing you said there, Andy, I’m not sure, you know, most companies are now worth more than Target, including the corner store, probably. So, I don’t Sorry, Target. So, anyhow, well, uh, folks, we got to get to our topic today, which is why do BDB firms fail to protect their brands online? Andy, this is close and near to near dear to my heart, I guess. I guess, you know, sort of um, you know, in terms of brands actually protecting themselves, you know, it’s e-commerce and and and just the the whole web is just a can be rife with all kinds of bad actors and you know folks who sell your products you don’t know why are brands not not protecting this you know and I think the best way to kind of describe this Andy is looking at Amazon right so we did a poll my company in SIBO which manages Amazon programs for branded B2B manufacturers we did a poll a couple years ago that asked u the several hundred manufacturers you a bunch of questions. Among them was are resellers selling your products on Amazon who are you know do are your products sold on Amazon? Almost 70% said yes. Then we asked the question do you know who these people are? Almost 70% over 70% said no we don’t know who they are selling our products. This is the perhaps the most acute example of losing control of your your brand online. Amazon. There’s so much motivation for companies to sell products there for small, you know, folks, opportunistic resellers, etc. to sell products on Amazon because, you know, it’s easy if you have a big brand, companies can go on and sell your product.

A great example of this is my friends over at Milwaukee, right? Everybody knows Milwaukee. They have great tools. Well, Milwaukee, I’m sorry to say, your your situation is a complete mess on Amazon. You have hundreds and hundreds of companies selling your products. You probably, I’m sure, don’t know who most of them are. Sorry, I’m talking directly to you, Milwaukee, but this is representative of what happens with a big brand on on Amazon and on the internet when you don’t control it. You know, this is one of their top selling products, Andy, on on Amazon. This this product is over a million dollars a year selling on Amazon. They have almost 50 resellers with names like Joe’s Discount Store and like all these weird, you know, resellers. That’s actually a reseller’s name like Ski, right? Like hundreds of these resellers that are selling their products on Amazon and you know who knows who these companies are. Discount Express Hardware and you know all these just goofy names. So these are not authorized, right? Okay. Milwaukee doesn’t know who these companies are. They may have gotten diverted inventory or something like that. Yes. Yes. stuff falling off the back of a truck or, you know, people buying it through, you know, whatever eBay and then putting it up on Amazon or buying it from Amazon and then reselling it on Amazon because they got it on Prime Day or something. You know, it’s Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, does Milwaukee know who all these are? I can’t say for a fact they don’t, but they don’t, right? So, it’s it’s, you know, yes, it’s a lot of opportunistic sellers. And the sad fact is that these um you know the these companies um you know like Milwaukee they this is a rampant issue. Most people don’t know who these sellers are and this has real costs. It leads to retail price erosion, right? I mean you know this how do these companies sell? How does you know sell the product uh of of Milwaukee? Well, they drop the price. It’s the only differentiation they have. They’re not like, you know, a, you know, an expert in in industrial engineering. These these companies are just they they have the product. It fell off the truck and they have it in their garage and they’re selling it at a low price. That’s it, right? So, retail price erosion, channel conflict. Guess what? Milwaukee sells to Gringanger and Home Depot and Lowe’s and MSC Industrial and all these others. Well, guess what? When you’re negotiating a contract with with those companies as as Milwaukee, all of a sudden that company, they’re not dumb. the distributor goes on Amazon, they look at the price and they go, “What the heck? Look at all this.” You know, I’m, you know, I could buy it for cheaper on Amazon than you’re trying to sell it to me for.

So, channel conflict and that just deteriorates the brand reputation, the brand perception in the marketplace. Also, it leads to things like incorrect product information. Uh, we’re going to hear from our special guest in a minute about, you know, legal ramifications of some of these issues, right? You buy a product on Amazon, it may not even be the right product. My wife and I bought a volleyball. Andy, you know, we play volleyball, right? I’m way too short, but we play volleyball. And, uh, we bought this beautiful, what we thought was a beautiful, you know, uh, I can’t remember the make of it, but beautiful, uh, volleyball that’s supposed to be a high-end, you know, $50 volleyball. We got this cheap thing that had the same brand on it, but it was not the right, it’s not a actual product. Getting the wrong product, right? This is also what happens on Amazon. I’m getting fraudulent product or counterfeit. And then finally, you’ve got opportunity costs. If you’re not controlling this, you’ve got, you know, revenue and profit loss. You’re not actually selling the product. You’re not controlling your re your pro, you know, the presentation. You’re not actually the one selling the product. Therefore, you’re losing profitability. In some cases, the revenue is going to an alternative uh counterfeit item. So, there’s real real problems here. Why are brands not controlling this?

Well, we have our friend here. I got a question for you. Okay. Wait. Before we introduce John Groza, hold on. Hold on. Yep. Yep. Okay. Go ahead. No. So, my question is, what’d you do with the volleyball? Oh, we still we we threw it away. I mean, what are you going to do? We threw it away. So, you didn’t take any action to return that, get your money back, or anything? No, I mean, we issued a complaint against the seller, but All right. Well, because I’m I was looking at your list, and we’re going to ask John this question in a moment. I only saw one of those four things that was explicitly anti- buyer, meaning the other stuff was all in the seller. Don’t stop. Okay. as a buyer if I can return this thing or why do I care?

Okay. So, all right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hey, John’s got a few things to say about that. And by the way, Yeah. Okay. Put your kid in that like freaking defective bicycle helmet and let when they run into the freaking wall and they they have brain damage. Okay. Sure, Andy. Go for it. Right. So, we have to comment and and refute everything that Andy says.

We have an expert here, John Groza. Hey guys. who’s a partner at KJK. He’s a he’s a a lawyer. John, you and I have worked together on quite a few of these brand protection issues. KJK is a giant in the legal community. Um really fantastic firm. And John runs the intellectual property e-commerce practice. Uh John, why don’t you say hello and introduce yourself a little bit?

Hey guys, happy Ryder Cup Friday. Thanks for having me on. Um, always fun to talk about these issues and yeah, so I’m a partner at KJK. As Brian mentioned, we’re a full-ervice business firm, but we do have a particular expertise in this e-commerce or we term brand enforcement practice, which is national in scope. So, we’re helping manufacturers uh of all all all types, but typically, you know, with premium products that sit at the top of their respective marketplaces. Um, and we help them in in these situations shut down unauthorized resellers of their products, effectively protect their brand u by virtue of protecting their intellectual property and then um shutting down these these u bad actors who um have all sorts of negative ramifications on their on their brand as a whole and on their customer base and their distribution channels. Right.

Thank you for joining us today and you know you’re an expert in these areas. I mean what’s your reaction to this? Why why aren’t companies doing this? Why aren’t they controlling their brands? I mean, is is it just concern about, you know, backlash or is it is it concern about what what are your thoughts on that? I mean, this seems to be such an issue here. It’s it’s certainly become more of an issue over the last several years.

This practice is really kind of exploding. Um, you know, it could be a variety of reasons depending on organizational size and how uh how many resources an organization has. But, you know, there’s there’s ways to combat this regardless of the size of your organization. And it can it can stem from there’s hes hesitation can resolve from a variety of of reasons. Um, one feeling like you just don’t know where to begin, not really understanding that you have rights in your intellectual property, your copyrights, even if your product isn’t patented or patentable, still have rights in your copyrights and your trademarks. Yep. Which you should be vigilantly enforcing. Um, and there’s there’s a way to do this without getting sideways. Some people fear getting sideways with Amazon. That’s that’s not going to be an issue for you. Some people fear getting sideways depending on how they go to market with their distribution channels. In fact, I would argue that it’s going to put you in a better position with your with yourized dist distribution channels if you do police this effectively. Um, and then some people fear backlash either from the consumer, customer, or if they wanted to pursue and and oftentimes you’re not even pursuing actual litigation. But if you were to bring claims or you subjecting yourself to some kind of an antitrust argument or some kind of yeah counter claim and I would say in most instances, if you do it the right way, you you shouldn’t be as concerned about that.

Obviously, every every instance is is unique. Other times it’s it’s simple as uh you know budgetary concerns or budgetary allocations within large organizations where some of our clients were dealing with the legal departments or the e-commerce group or oftent times right right we’re kind of sitting in between uh both of those groups and it’s a uh budget whose bucket is this is it is this going to come out of to spend you know a little bit of money and um we find that it’s it’s always a wise investment really I mean not to sound self-interested but your brand is the most important thing you have going and I would argue even oftentimes more important in this day and age and in the world of e-commerce more important than the intellectual property um you know that would be potentially patentable how your product actually works yeah you know use Coca-Cola as an example for instance you know my understanding the the formula for the the drink has changed you know many times over the over the the decades but it’s that Coca-Cola brand that’s so iconic and so value behind it. Um that you’re not policing that then it’s it’s probably not wise.

Well, Andy has this misguided uh you know thinking about this is all bad for the buyer, right? Andy, you want to clarify your point of view there? My logic. So when I hear you’re going to do brand, you’re going to do channel enforcement, brand enforcement, I hear as a buyer fewer options.

Now, yes, some of those unauthorized sellers are probably shysters. Yes. And I’m going to get that defective product, but some of them, if you believe in the capitalist system and and uh self-interest, that some of them are are just selling the product and they’re going to stand behind this. So, you’re going to remove options for me as a buyer. Why is that in my best interest as a buyer? I would say quantity over or uh you know, quality over quantity, right? I mean maybe potentially slightly fewer options but better actual legitimate options from a consumer standpoint. I mean there’s a a huge consumer protection argument at play here and debate really is that I would say we you know companies that pay attention to who’s out there selling their products.

They’re providing that consumer with one the legitimate product. You never know if you’re buying it from ABC Tools or whomever used Milwaukee earlier as an example. I mean, those are products that are one, you know, Milwaukeee’s got a phenomenal brand. Very worth investing in for sure. They also sell products that um you know, if not used properly or if they haven’t been shipped or stored properly or they were damaged in the way they were handled or shipped as the product gets to the end user, there’s a consumer safety issue there. I mean, we’re not talking about volleyballs, right? We’re talking about potentially a handsaw or something that right, you know, if that was somehow altered by the the seller. You don’t know who these people are. I think your poll said 70% um have unauthorized sellers and then another 70 equal percentage didn’t even know who those people were. I mean, if I’m someone who’s invested in my brand, I have my own business. I don’t want I don’t want just any Joe off the street, right, being a uh a quasi ambassador for my brand. uh it’s just it’s not good business. And from a consumer standpoint, I think if I’m a consumer, I’d rather I want to know that I’m buying it from an authorized uh dealer or distributor, whether that’s e-commerce or brick and mortar or from the manufacturer directly because then I know that warranty is going to be viable, right?

If something goes wrong with the product in the future, I can go to the manufacturer. Now, many of these manufacturers probably say in their warranties and terms and conditions that if you don’t buy it from an authorized channel or or from us directly, warranty doesn’t apply, right? I think it’s a case by case basis. Maybe maybe a manufacturer would say, “Okay, we’ll honor it.”

But, um, and it also erodess the reputation as you know, as you mentioned earlier, because if somebody else is out there speaking on behalf of your brand, I’m a consumer. I don’t really care who, you know, this is a this is a Milwaukee product or whomever. I don’t care where I bought it. I’m still going to hold you accountable in my mind. I’m associate it’s a Milwaukee product, right? So, right. Exactly. Yep.

You know, it’s good good points, John. I mean, you know, Andy Andy’s just about, you know, um killing off all the babies, so he can just, you know, it’s it’s not mutually exclusive. I think it’s it’s a it’s a win-win for both the manufacturer as well as as the consumer. I mean, no, no, totally, totally agree.

So, let’s get the safety issue. I’ll seed that one. You don’t want a defective product in the panel. I mean, you want more options, but I don’t want to have bad product coming my way. And I think yeah, some products are, you know, a food product, for instance, there’s not only a safety issue, but a quality issue. might not be dangerous depending on what the food product is or a vitamin product some kind of supplement or a battery or something that needs to be stored and shipped in a particular manner whether there’s a temperature issue or you know battery product you know these could potentially if not handled properly good good points good points and you know so so yes Andy I mean I think ultimately you know John would argue and I I agree with him that you know it’s it’s all about you know it’s it’s about the seller, the brand, and the buyer.

I mean, you know, like the volleyball or, you know, there have been documented case studies or studies um and there was a Wall Street Journal article, I think a few years ago, Annie, if you recall, um talking about like, you know, motorcycle helmets that were fraudulent on sold through Amazon that were represented as a brand and people getting into accidents and dying.

I mean, this is like, you know, you got serious issues around this. John, I want one other question. So all these these arguments are valid and again I see there’s some good arguments here. Then why doesn’t Amazon care as much about this? I don’t know. Well, I was just going to mention I mean so you’ve seen you know Amazon makes their whole thesis is we’re we’re a marketplace.

We’re simply establishing a marketplace for other parties to transact. We’re not necessarily taking responsibility for these products. However, there’s, you know, we’ve seen as, as Brian mentions, there’s there’s been a backlash in the media, um, and, you know, some lawsuits, I believe, filed over the years where, you know, once you start heading down that consumer safety path, Amazon is is going to pay more attention to those types of issues and be more receptive to those arguments.

Well, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released um uh something recently, John, I don’t know if you saw it. I think it was last year or sometime early this year where they talked about, you know, Amazon now being classified as a distributor, meaning that they could be held held responsible or liable for products sold through the marketplace channel. And I don’t know if there’s any real legal weight to that.

But um at the end of the day um yeah the government seems to be after after that you know holding holding Amazon accountable for not only sales of products that they’ve bought in a vendor central or 1P model wholesale model but products that are you know that are sold through the marketplace model any thoughts on that was that directed to Andy I mean I have yeah I have thoughts I mean I think Andy doesn’t have any thoughts so yeah you can even Stephen Forson just said, “Great question, Andy.” So there you go.

Yes. Thank Thank you, Steve. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Stephen. Um, yep. So, not my Stephen. How about You know, that was a good question, too, right? Um, John, go ahead. No, you’re exactly right. And, you know, Amazon is not going to care so much if you come to them and say, “Hey, you know, what are you going to do about this? This these people are using our logo, right? our our trademark, and they’re not authorized to sell.” Amazon care about authorized sellers or not so much. they but if if you were to go to them and say listen like this is a serious issue we don’t know who these people are they’re selling this at a deep discount which you know again you don’t care about the price Amazon as much as you care about consumer protection issues though are right if there’s if there’s liability there and we’re not you know t we have a good working relationship with Amazon um and many of our clients have a hesitancy maybe to do things about this because they don’t want to find themselves sideways with the behemoth that is Amazon right when generating a massive amount of their revenue from their e-commerce sales on that thirdparty platform.

Um, but there’s a way to do that and we do this every day where we’re working in in conjunction with Amazon to address these issues oftentimes centered around, you know, potential consumer safety issues. So, yeah. Yeah, it’s nice to see the government in some way, you know, stepping in to Yeah. to give that a little bit of a backbone and some legitimacy. Well, let let me share the So, we asked our community this question, John.

We asked LinkedIn. We said, “Hey, you know, what is the biggest reason B2B companies fail to protect their brands online?” This is fascinating to me. The number one answer was they don’t feel like they have a way to enforce or police. Number two, no executive alignment. Nobody said I don’t have a foundation of IP or I’m afraid of backlash. IP protection, intellectual property protection, no way to enforce or police was the number one answer. Why companies are not protecting their brand? Does that does that just mean that they don’t understand that they have rights to enforce? What do you think your reaction? Yeah, I think there’s maybe some lack of understanding as to what they can do.

You hear the phrase um from new clients thrown around a lot. what they’ll say this this effectively is this just whack-a-ole like if we were gonna go after one another one’s gonna pop up to some degree sure but if you’re not doing anything I would argue doing something is better than doing nothing and I think a lot of a lot of companies would be surprised at how much progress they can make yeah and how much they can take back the buy box and shut down a lot of these folks because oftentimes what we see as well is there’s a maybe a vast universe of resellers maybe a certain percentage of those might be co-owned or might there might be, you know, the same there might be the same people under a variety of different storefronts. You can shut down one. You also set an example in that marketplace.

These these resellers oftentimes are in communication with one another. Right. Right. Chat rooms and forums that where they’re saying, “Hey, did you get a cease letter from AJK or law firm? How did you respond to that? What did you do?”

Wow. If someone says, “Oh, yeah, I got one and I just ignored it. Nothing else happened.” Then that’s not great either. But if you actually commit to a program where you’re sending letters, you’re tracking and monitoring uh your products on the marketplace. Yeah. You can really make a lot of head headway and and really recapture the buy box which ultimately is protecting your brand but protecting your profit margins in your online store.

Is  Amazon really the big culprit here? I mean do we see it this do you see this happening in other places too? Well, I would say Amazon is not the culprit. It’s it’s these sellers that are utilizing Amazon’s platform. Okay. But yeah, I think you have uh it’s you see it across all these other thirdparty platforms as well. We see it on Alibaba, Walmart.com. Yeah. Yeah. See it on um you know, and every platform is a little bit different and how how you approach it and address it. Sure. Um you know, see it on um eBay for instance.

Yeah. different ball game, but you know, similar. But but ultimately success, John, you can get control of this if you own the brand. If you’re if you’re a traditional branded B2B manufacturer and you own it, you have intellectual property rights to that brand. You’re a Milwaukee. Like, so Milwaukee has a path to clean this up, for example, even though it’s a mess right now. Sorry, Milwaukee. Um, right. I mean, they have Well, certainly. And I’m not I I don’t have any other than the screenshots you you posted. I I have not taken a look at their their presence and couldn’t speak to, you know, their universe of unauthorized sellers, but um yeah, if you have a brand that you’re investing in, you’re advertising, you’re buying ad space, and you’re yeah, you’re promoting your brand in the marketplace to your consumer base and your distribution channels.

I mean, this should be, you know, as big a priority as as your basic advertising budget. I mean, this is and it doesn’t even have to come very close to your advertising budget, right? There is certainly things you can do and it doesn’t people say you know what like I just I don’t love the way that the judicial system operates and the last thing I want to do was get some lawsuit and it’s long and expensive and stress but I mean it doesn’t even you can you can commit to monitoring a cease and assist program that doesn’t always have to result in litigation right and oftentimes when it does if there’s a particular reseller that’s been disruptive for years and very problematic you decide you want to take it to the next level and file a case. They’re oftentimes every case is different for sure, but these cases are typically resolved fairly early on. Yes. Right. Right. You settle out.