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.
