MagLite has been a household name for decades, but the brand wasn't selling on Amazon itself. Resellers found product where they could, and some of them bought it straight off MagLite's own DTC site at a deep discount and resold it at a markup. A single listing might have anywhere from 10 to 40 sellers on it, all at different prices, none of them at MAP.
The listings had been left alone. One or two images, a basic title, no A+ content. Reviews on the hero SKUs were good, but nobody was looking after the pages and nobody was running ads. With the buy box changing hands constantly and reseller margins as thin as they were, there was no reason for anyone to spend. Account health was slipping too — MagLite had been hit with several trademark complaints on trademarks MagLite owns.
- Active SKUs under management
- 46Active SKUs under management
- Third-party resellers mapped and monitored
- 74Third-party resellers mapped and monitored
- Reseller listings analysed before launch
- 90Reseller listings analysed before launch
Find out what we were dealing with
We ran a reseller analysis on every product, plus a competitor and market analysis on top of it. Who was selling, at what price, against which competitors. That research shaped the channel strategy and later the creative brief.
MagLite has a lot of SKUs, so we split them into phases and started with the hero products. We also flagged the SKUs that would need a compliance review early, so they got scheduled instead of holding up everything behind them.
- 01
Rank the hero SKUs
Sort the catalogue on revenue potential, the reviews already sitting on the listing, and how likely we were to win the buy box once pricing was fixed.
- 02
Flag the compliance work
Find the SKUs that needed a compliance or documentation review before they could go live, so the timeline accounted for it up front.
- 03
Release in groups
Take each group live only once pricing, content and inventory were all ready. Not before.
- 04
Add the next group
Build on listings that were already working rather than spreading the effort across the whole catalogue at once.
Fixing the channel meant running it
We took responsibility across six areas and worked them at the same time rather than one after another, so pricing, content and inventory were all ready when a listing went live.
- 01
Reseller and market intelligence
We mapped 74 resellers across 90 listings, product by product, then ran a competitor and category analysis on top of it. That gave us a strategy built around how MagLite actually competes.
- 02
MAP policy and enforcement
We helped MagLite draft a MAP policy and get it out to every seller and distributor. From there we watched for violations and escalated enforcement as far as each case needed.
- 03
Catalogue and listing integrity
We found duplicate listings sitting under the wrong UPCs, including on hero products. They were splitting reviews, traffic and sales, and leaving shoppers unsure which listing was the real one.
- 04
Creative rebuild
New titles, bullets, infographics and A+ content, written off the back of the brand and competitor research. We put the USP messaging where it did the most for the brand.
- 05
Demand planning and FBA logistics
We took over demand forecasting and the FBA supply chain, walked MagLite through Amazon's labelling and palletising requirements, and kept inventory from running out or piling up.
- 06
Account health and Brand Registry
We worked with Amazon support to clear the trademark complaints, sent over the manufacturer and ownership documentation they needed, and got account health back to where it should have been.
Pricing the resellers out of the market
Once MAP was in place across every channel and the DTC discounting was under control, the arbitrage stopped working. We went back to the same reseller listings we had mapped at the start. Of the 82 where we had a price before and after, most had to raise theirs to avoid selling at a loss.
Reseller price response after MAP enforcement
What 82 tracked reseller listings did
- Raised price76%
- Lowered price16%
- Held price flat8%
| Segment | Share |
|---|---|
| Raised price | 76% |
| Lowered price | 16% |
| Held price flat | 8% |
How the numbers moved
Each group of listings we cleaned up added to the ones before it, and the timing worked in the brand's favour going into Q4. A flashlight is a gift people buy in December, and MagLite is a name shoppers recognise. Growth wasn't only coming from ad spend, either — organic revenue nearly tripled over the same four months.
Four months into peak
Percent growth vs. September 2024
| Period | Total revenue | Net profit | Organic revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2024 | +0% | +0% | +0% |
| Oct 2024 | +78% | +78% | +76% |
| Nov 2024 | +140% | +130% | +125% |
| Dec 2024 | +274% | +242% | +187% |
- Total revenue
- Net profit
- Organic revenue
Promos and discounts were planned carefully. Enough to move volume and make it hard for a reseller to compete, never enough to cheapen the brand.
With the buy box back on every hero product and the content rebuilt, ads were finally worth running. We modelled October with and without ad support: paid media was adding 37% to daily revenue and 32% to daily units. That spend kept MagLite above the reseller listings in search results, and the extra sales velocity pulled the organic rankings up with it.
Margins held through all of it. 41 of the 46 active SKUs stayed at 16% net margin or better, even against peak season CPCs.