2021 Guide To Getting Ungated In Toys and Games on Amazon

by Brandon | Last Updated: September 22, 2021

Overview

You finally got your new Amazon seller account approved but you can’t…sell anything? WTF? Every new seller faces this challenge of getting ungated, so don’t feel too overwhelmed.

Amazon “gates” new sellers. You are required to get approval to sell in certain categories and also certain brands.

This is to try and protect the marketplace from unsavory sellers.

Even at that, there are still so many half wits selling on Amazon, I’d hate to see what it would look like if they did let anyone sell anything.

Anyway, we’re going to focus on Toys & Games because that is my bread and butter.

If you’re on an absolute shoe string budget you should be ungated in (or able to sell) most books or used items like electronics and can start there.

So yard sales, eBay, Goodwill could all be places to get stuff on the cheap to sell on Amazon. Maybe even the “free” section on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

Then work your way up into the Toys & Games category. It will take some capital to make this happen.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Gated vs Restricted

There are two main definitions here that you need to know:

Gated: You need to submit an approval request, have it reviewed and hopefully accepted.

If you’re using the Revseller extension and have it linked to your Amazon seller account, it will look like this:

If you’re just working out of Amazon Seller Central “Add Product” then it will look like this.

Restricted: Amazon is not accepting any new sellers, just move on if you see this.

The Revseller extension will show up with “Restr” like this.

If you only have Amazon Add Product to work with, it will look like this once you search for the product/ASIN:

Why are some products restricted on Amazon?

I don’t think anyone truly knows.

It’s not a matter of the listing had too many sellers and Amazon was just trying to limit things. I’ve seen many listings with tons more sellers.

For some reason I am restricted on a lot of LEGO Friends items, more than any other product. It’s weird.

Some older accounts are grandfathered in, as you will see, the listing you’re trying for will usually have a lot of sellers.

Maybe the Amazon bots went wild. It’s been known to happen with pricing errors and compliance requests.

Will the restriction ever get lifted?

Probably not.

I’ve seen the restriction get lifted one time, and I think it was just a glitch on the listings.

There have been many cases where a listing will get down to only a few sellers and the restriction is still in place.

If you’re unlucky enough to have purchased some restricted inventory before checking then your best bet is to return it, if possible. Selling on ebay is another option if it is profitable.

Getting Ungated

Unfortunately, this does cost a bit of money. And most likely the products you buy to get ungated will lose you money. Unless you hold them until Christmas, then you can probably make some money. That’s something you’ll have to decide. Otherwise, it’s just a cost of doing business.

There are two main Toy distributors you can use for getting ungated in the Toys category itself and many of the brands within the Toy category.

The first is EE Distribution. <– you have to make sure it is this link, they have a retail side that is different and will not work.

You’ll also want an account at Shepher.

These are the two main ones we’ll focus on for right now. You will need to have your business in order as I believe both require Resale Certificates to open accounts. If you do not have a resale certificate yet, head on over to Google and search for “resale certificate your state” where your state is actually your state, like “resale certificate Florida”. This will also allow you to be sales tax exempt for most of your purchases online or in store.

EE Distribution Account Setup

EE is pretty straightforward when you go to their site they want to get you signed up right away.

This is just the gateway to the real application.

You’ll notice there is a $250 minimum purchase required with your first order.

Also, they advertise Amazon FBA service. Basically they will help you get ungated in items and can even send your items directly to Amazon for you. (I would not recommend starting off with this option, if ever.)

Once you click brief questionnaire you’ll be greeted by another screen in which you can put in your email yet again. Yay!

And then we can finally get on to the real meat and potatoes of their questionnaire.

You start off with one question and as you answer it, another one will populate below that. I put red arrows next to the selections I’d expect for you to make. But fill it out honestly.

After that, they’re going to send you an email with a link to fill out another document that you’ll need to e-sign.

This will be where you need to fill out your business name and street address.

MAKE SURE TO MATCH THE ADDRESS YOU USE FOR YOUR AMAZON SELLER ACCOUNT!

For example, I used a UPS box to setup my business, FEIN, resale certificate, Amazon acct, etc. It will be very important later when we submit the invoice to Amazon that the ship to matches your Amazon seller account address.

It will ask you for anticipated monthly purchases, just put whatever you want, like $2000 (they will not force you to spend this amount or anything.)

There is some shipping information they go over.

You’ll want to select “EE FedEx Ground” as your primary shipping method and EE FedEx SmartPost as your secondary shipping method.

Next it goes through some info on cancellation and return policies that you have to acknowledge. You should read this.

Then you will need to input your “seller’s permit number” – this would be either your resale certificate number or business license number. I used my resale certificate number.

Put a credit card on file, upload your resale certificate and copy of your FEIN and bada bing, bada boom you’re done.

They’ll reach out to schedule a webinar with you to show you how to use the site. It’s kind of dumb if you ask me. If you know how to use Google search you can figure out their site.

Hopefully they still do this and I’m not talking out of turn, but they should give you a 5% discount to use on your first order. If they don’t still do this could you please hit me up on Twitter and let me know so I can update this section?

Oh and get ready for them to spam the ever loving crap out of you with toy offers.

I highly recommend you shut that off first thing:

Shepher Account Setup

To apply at Shepher, click on over here.

You will be presented with a fairly straightforward sign up form:

I’ll say this again.

MAKE SURE TO USE THE SAME ADDRESS AS YOU USED ON YOUR AMAZON SELLER ACCOUNT!

For ungating purposes, the addresses need to match. You’re more than welcome to use your home address or different address later (I do all the time) but for the initial ungating plan, it will make your life oh so much easier if your Amazon seller account and your Toy Distributor shipping/billing addresses all match.

Just a few things I wanted to point out on the application.

TAX ID – this is the same as your FEIN that you received from the IRS. Like a SSN for your business.

Resell Certificate – this would be your sales tax ID. The terms can be considered interchangeable.

They are going to want to know your Amazon seller ID (Seller Display Name), be honest and just tell them. These companies are here to help you.

Once you get approved their site is easy to use. I’ll show you a few sections down when we go shopping for a few items.

Also, if you don’t know how to get your Store URL…

Setting Up Your Amazon Store URL

It’s pretty simple to setup a nice, clean Amazon store URL as long as you know where to go.

Open up Amazon Seller Central and look for the gear icon in the top right.

Go ahead and click the Account Info option.

The next page will look like this:

Click on Seller Profile and it will take you to the next screen:

To set your URL you’ll need to hit Edit for the Marketplace you want. Canada shown for illustration purposes only. 😉

Go ahead and put whatever you want. Amazon will tell you if it is available. If you’re happy then go ahead and hit Submit.

Congrats, you now have a url that looks like www.amazon.com/shops/YOUR_SHOP_NAME

Go ahead and use that wherever you want, like on the Shepher application.

How To Get Ungated In LEGO On Amazon

This section could possibly stir up a little controversy and there are some potential consequences you need to know about the process.

The dilemma starts because there is just not that good of a way to get LEGO products from a distributor.

Shepher has none.

EE Distribution has one at the time of this writing but it is a preorder.

LINK HERE

Pre-orders generally don’t work for ungating as it has to be shipped items. BUT, if this item is in stock when you see this…this should work fine for ungating AND double dipping which I’ll explain in the next section.

Side note: just because it says “Preorder Coming September 2021” does not mean that at all. It could be well into January before you see it. So keep that in mind if you’re still thinking of doing a pre-order anyway.

The downside is that item comes in packs of 4 and is $14.99 a unit (plus shipping) – so you’re looking at having to buy 12 for a total of $179.88 before shipping.

So what’s a flipper to do in this case?

Well, we head on over to LEGO.com and buy 10 keychains for $5.99 each, of course. You might order a couple extra to get free shipping, but make sure there is at least 10 of the same item.

Try to pick a Star Wars themed one if you can, trust me on this.

After LEGO ships your order you’ll get an invoice maybe a day or two later.

Here’s where the controversy comes in.

When LEGO sends you the “invoice” it has the word Receipt in the top right.

Amazon doesn’t technically accept receipts for ungating.

I’ve removed any sensitive information for obvious reasons.

And this is the exact invoice I used to get ungated for LEGO.

I have heard that some people have removed the word receipt from their invoices.

Now, to be clear, it is against Amazon’s TOS to alter an invoice in any way.

So, I’m definitely not telling you to do that.

You and you alone have to figure out if that is worth the risk.

It is possible to get approved leaving the word “Receipt” in there. But chances are much higher that it will be rejected.

If you leave everything in tact, DO NOT alter the invoice later and try to re-send it. DEFINITELY DON’T DO THIS. SERIOUS.

Amazon has ways to detect alterations and they are getting better.

You’d be much better off getting at least 10 units through EE if at all possible.

However, IF you were going to try this in a hypothetical world I’d go about it something like this.

Warning: You are putting your Amazon account at risk. I take no responsibility if this backfires on you!

Edit the PDF in either Adobe Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, Canva or whatever.

Print it out and highlight the physical copy.

Highlight:

• Ship To Address
• Invoice Date
• Quantity of 10 for the Keychain
• LEGO’s Address In The Bottom Left
• Phone Number To Right Of Address

Then scan it. If you don’t have a scanner but have an iPhone, there is this really great free app called InstaPDF that will make a PDF with your camera that looks just like a scan.

Send it in that way. It’ll be safer. If you’re willing to take that chance.

Making Purchases

Shopping on both EE and Shepher are both pretty straight forward. If you’ve ever done any online shopping before I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

One thing I mentioned before is double dipping.

What that means is using one purchase of one item to get ungated in two or more brands.

Toys will be your main category you need to get ungated in first, one time and then every thing else will be brands.

Allow me to give you some examples.

If you were to buy the Ninjago LEGO item posted earlier you could get ungated in Toys and LEGO.

Perhaps you want nothing to do with LEGOs because you hate money or something.

Let’s search for another popular brand you’ll want to get ungated in. Barbie.

Search EE and Shepher both for Barbie.

We’re looking for the cheapest in stock item with at least 10 units and I’d also recommend an actual action figure type Barbie, not a pack of cards or doll clothes.

For EE it was this item and for Shepher it was this item.

Buying 10 each of one of those could get you ungated in Toys, Mattel AND Barbie.

Then you’re going to turn around and sell the items on Amazon after you get approved.

You’ll probably lose some money on these items. If you hold until Q4 you can probably make most of the money back. Or, just think of it as a cost of doing business and a tax write off.

Don’t go chasing profits on these items.

The only goal we have is to find a product that will allow us to get ungated in as many brands as possible as quickly as possible.

On your first order, it may very well be worth ordering more than 10 initially to get ungated in Toys.

It looks better when they’re reviewing your invoice if you bought more than the minimum and increases your chances of being approved. (My opinion and I have no facts to back it up lol.)

Very important: this is so important I’m going to repeat it, MAKE SURE YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS MATCHES THE ONE ON FILE WITH YOUR AMAZON SELLER ACCOUNT.

When you first try to get ungated in Toys (or any new main category down the road) Amazon is going to want you to take pictures of the shipping box, label, and contents inside along with the UPC code of the item. You’ll be taking several pictures to upload with your first request.

After that, you won’t have to do the pictures again for individual brands, only for different categories (IE maybe you want to venture into the Grocery category.)

You still always need to have the shipping address match on your invoice though.

Here is the actual invoice I used to get ungated in Toys (sensitive information removed) – it was a purchase from Shepher.

You can see I went over the minimum quantity of 10 on some items so it looked better.

I used Adobe Acrobat to highlight the areas to make it easier on whoever was reviewing my invoice to check the info they needed.

Make it easier for them so it is easier for you.

Now, you may be thinking damn Brandon, $426 is a lot!

Yeah…but remember, this invoice opened up so many doors.

Let’s break it down.

I used this invoice to get ungated in Toys and Games, Mattel, Barbie, Hasbro, Star Wars, Marvel, Avengers.

And then I turned around and sold everything and probably got 60% of my money back.

Had I waited until Christmas I would have definitely got my money back, but I wanted to turn and burn and buy more items to get ungated.

I would recommend going with one order like this to start.

And it doesn’t even have to be this big, but I was comfortable with this.

Anyway, you want to make sure you actually get ungated first before going ham on tons of other brands.

Submitting to Amazon

Once you get to that point where you have the products in hand (at least for the first time, after that you just need the invoice) – go ahead and click on Apply To Sell on a listing (preferably of something you purchased from EE or Shepher.)

The next screen will look like this:

Go ahead and make sure your invoice meets all the requirements listed and check all the boxes.

Upload your PDF by hitting Select Files (or drag the file to that area.)

Under comments, what I like to do is include the item number on the invoice and the ASIN it matches up to.

If you don’t know how to get the ASIN, it will be in the Amazon listing URL in your browser’s bar. Like this:

Input your email. I just skip the phone number.

Click Submit on the selling application page and just wait it out. It could take anywhere from a couple hours to a few days to hear back.

Hopefully soon you get that sweet, sweet email from Amazon Seller Support that reads:

“I’m pleased to inform you that we have approved your request and granted you permission to sell the brand.”

You’re well on your way now.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

What are the best brands to get ungated in?

In my opinion:

• Barbie
• Mattel
• Star Wars
• Hasbro
• LEGO
• Disney
• Marvel
• WWE
• Transformers
• Jurassic World
• Nerf
• Fortnite
• Fisher Price

Those relatively few brands will allow you to make life changing money. And you can double up on several (Nerf + Fortnite), (Barbie + Mattel), (Star Wars + Hasbro) – etc.

What If my invoice gets rejected?

Read the feedback they provide and make sure it’s just something stupid and that your invoice actually meets the requirements.

If it does, submit it again! Maybe wait a couple days.

You want to try to get a different reviewer who will be more favorable towards you.

Can I submit a receipt from Walmart or Target?

Nope, a receipt from a big box retail store (or online receipt) will not work.

Final Thoughts

Getting ungated on Amazon for Toys & Games (or other categories) is the first step to making life changing money.

I hope this has simplified the process for you.

If not, how about you connect with me on Twitter and I’ll try to help you out as best as I can!