Getting Ungated in Clothing, Shoes, and Luggage

This post has been a long time coming. So let’s just get to it 🙂

Mike wrote a fantastic post about the process you should use to get ungated in Health, Beauty, and Grocery. If you have successfully completed that, the next step is to get yourself ungated in Shoes, Clothing, and Luggage.

Here is how you get ungated in shoes, clothes, or luggage:

• Make sure your metrics are good (or non-existent!)
  • Order defect rate: < 1%
  • Pre-fulfillment cancel rate: < 2.5%
  • Late shipment rate: < 4%
• Make sure you are registered for the Professional Seller Plan.  Anyone who is doing this remotely seriously needs to be on this plan anyway.  It pays for itself after 40 sales per month.  (If you’re unfamiliar with the distinction, check out Amazon’s explanation)

Now you will need to go ahead and check to see if you are already ungated. You can do so by clicking here.

If you are not ungated, you will need to do the following:

Go to your search bar in top right of your screen and type in either: Shoes, Luggage, or Clothing. You should get results like this. Click the top result for Shoes and Luggage and click the 2 result for Clothing.

Once you click on the search result, you will want to go to the bottom of the page and click “request approval” It should look like this:

Now you will have to answer some questions. Here is how you should answer them. These answers have worked for everyone I have helped in the past:

After you hit submit, you are going to be asked to look at a few photos (just like the screen below). Just click “yes” until you get to the next photo.

You should get to this page and you can answer as I did below:

You once you hit submit, you will get the screen below.

Now that you have done part #1, you will need to wait for Amazon to respond. Amazon will send you an email and request that you submit a flat file.

DON’T FREAK OUT! It is actually really simple. 

Amazon will also request that you schedule a call to walk through. If you are really nervous about this, please schedule a call.

The email should look something like this:

If you can’t find the flat files, you can actually just download them below:

Shoes, Sunglasses, and Handbags

Clothing and Accessories

Luggage

These look like a pain in the ass, but they are actually really easy. I would like to turn your attention to the tabs along the bottom. The three you need to look at are Template, Example, Valid Values. The file looks like this. Here is what I would recommend doing:

Copy the first example (grab only the first 5 listings of it) and paste it into the template. This is going to give you a place to start with creating your flat file. We are going to follow the example exactly. Select a product in the category you want to get approved in and start with that.

I am actually going to walk you through one example below.

This is an example for shoes: 

SKU: This is a number/letter combination that you assign. Just make something up. Like this: HT6732. Fill this out for all five rows (make sure to switch it up for each row.

Product Name: Put down the name of your product. It’s really that simple

External ID: Put in the UPC code. You can find this on the Amazon listing page (if you are using a product that is already listed).

Product ID Type: UPC. Do not put it on the first row (parent row)

Brand: Insert the brand name

Product Description: Right a very short and specific description of the product. This shouldn’t be more than 2 sentences.

Item Type: Use the valid values tab along the bottom to find the type that is the closest to the item you are listing.

Standard Price: Make up a price and place it in the spot

Quantity: The number of items you are sending in – This can also be made up. Do not put it on the first row (parent row)

Package Quantity: The number of units per package. I would type in 1. Do not put it on the first row (parent row)

Shipping Weight: You can make this one up too. Do not put it on the first row (parent row)

Shipping Weight Unit: I would put LB – Do not put it on the first row (parent row)

Bullet Points: I would do 4 bullet points. These should be 1 or 2 word descriptions of the item. Examples: Rubber sole, manmade, etc

Style type: Select a style type from the valid values tab. You can also use the browsing tree to find a type. It can be something like: Running Sneaker

Image: This is the hardest part of the entire file. I promise it’s really not that hard, but I am going to show you how to do it quickly. Right click the photo on the Amazon list and select “Copy Image URL.” Take this URL and paste it into a web browser and hit enter. Now you will right click on the image and select “Save Image as” – You will save this on your desktop and rename it Shoe Photo.

Now you will need to go to http://imgur.com/ and create an account. You can actually do this by logging into Facebook (that way you don’t forget your password). Now you will need to upload the photo from your desktop.

Once you have uploaded the photo, you will want to copy the direct link (as shown above) and paste that link into your flat file.

Parentage: You will need to put Parent in the first row and Child in the other 4 rows.

Parent SKU: Copy the SKU from the first cell of the first row and paste it in the bottom 4 rows. The top listing should be left blank.

Relationship: Type “Variation” in the bottom four rows.

Variation Type: Type “Size/Color” in all 5 rows.

Now that we have the flat file done, we will need to upload it to Amazon.

You can do that by going to your Seller Central Home Page and click “Manage my case” The following photos should help.

I always type in: “See attached” and then I hit send!

Then we wait. Amazon takes around 3-4 days to respond (sometimes sooner) and they will send you an email that tells you are approved or you will need to make some directions. They literally tell you exactly what to fix. Fix any issues and resubmit it to Amazon.

And that’s it. It’s really not that hard 🙂 Clothing and Luggage are slightly different on the flat file, but they are very simple.

If you have any questions, just let me know! If you don’t want to do it yourself, there are some great people that can help – Here is a great one that we highly recommend because of the quality of service, so we did set up an affiliate agreement.  That being said, it does not cost you more to use this link, we just get a small commission which will help us to create post’s like this one!

Until next time!

CW