An Amazon FBA seller shares why his shoe-care brand Deadstock Los Angeles is shutting down after losing a two-year trademark fight to an unrelated t-shirt company. He made $81,000 in revenue last month and $700,000 this year, but is rebranding entirely rather than continue the legal battle.
These type of topics are the reason why I decided to make a YouTube channel, because when you look all over YouTube, when you search up Amazon FBA, you only see the positive side of Amazon FBA. And it's for good reason. A lot of content creators either have a course to sell or a software that they get a commission from. And you guys subscribe to my YouTube channel because I'm very transparent about my day-to-day business. And no, this video is not clickbait. My current Amazon FBA business is about to get shut down and I'm going to explain why. But you have to realize that this might impact my business by a whole 360 degrees because as you can go ahead and see, my current business right now, uh, we can see that in the last 30 days makes around $81,000 worth of revenue. Obviously revenue does not equal profit and we go over that in a lot of the videos, but year to date you can see my business is $700,000 of revenue already year to date, which is up 200% from last year. So by my business on Amazon FBA getting shut down, I risk this actual monetary amount going down to zero. And if you follow Amazon FBA, you know there's primarily 3 different ways to sell on Amazon. One is retail arbitrage, the other is wholesale, and what I do is private label. And if you watch any of my previous videos, you guys know that my current brand right now is Deadstock Los Angeles, which is a shoe cleaner type of care kits, wipes, whatever you name it, as far as taking care of your actual shoes. And the thing is, the last year and a half, I actually went ahead and got sued. And the reason might be a little bit more controversial because it has to do with my actual name. And if you ever discuss Amazon FBA, a lot of people tell you to get a trademark right away as soon as you start selling because you don't want to have to deal with any trademark infringements or anything that has to do with the court itself. Because trust me, it is a long, expensive process that you want to avoid at all times. And I have been selling on Amazon for a little over 3 years now, and I decided my very first year I do not want to go ahead and get a trademark because I don't know if my products are going to sell. I want to offer this product onto my actual customers on Amazon, and once I find out that my product is selling, that is when I'll register for a trademark. But the thing is, I did all my research beforehand. I've checked to see if anybody had a trademark for this name in this specific category, and I was basically in the clear. So once I started expanding my brand and offering different products within my brand, I knew that was the perfect time to apply for a trademark. And that's exactly what I did. But you have to understand that when you apply for a trademark on day 1, it might not be until day 90 to 120 where you actually get a rep that will look over to make sure that you're not infringing on anybody else's trademark, and everything is clear for you to be registered for that particular category. And the cool thing about trademarks is that 2 different names can actually be approved to have the same trademark. For instance, this Stanley tape measure here is for tape measures, right? But somebody could come out with a Stanley's Water, and because it's 2 different categories, the same trademark name can actually be registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. So after my trademark rep reviewed my actual products that I'm selling, my name, along with a lot of other research that they go ahead and do, they said that my actual name will be able to get registered as a trademark under the United States Patent and Trademark Office. But before it actually becomes official, they put it into a book where somebody has 30 days to object if they think that there might be potential trademark infringement. And that is what happened with my name. And without giving away too much detail, the opposing party thought I was infringing on their trademark even though it was 2 different categories. My category was for shoe cleaning type of kits, their category was for t-shirts, right? And when I spoke to my attorneys, they all felt like I had a very strong argument where we could go ahead and take this up to the trademark office and they'll be able to see that we could coexist together with the same name because we sell in different types of categories. And before we wanted to go ahead and go into opposition, obviously you want to try and negotiate, right? I can go ahead and put a disclaimer my products. We can try and put both on our websites that we are not associated with each other so our customers will not get confused. But the opposing counsel just didn't want me to use the name Deadstock anymore for my products. And the thing is that the word Deadstock, especially with my customers, resonates a lot. And that's why I always talk about building a brand where you can talk to your actual customers. The word Deadstock is in the shoe cleaning type of environment means that your actual shoe is no longer in stock anywhere and they are brand new. So in association, if you use my product Deadstock, you would have a shoe that basically looks brand new. And you have to understand, when any type of legal ramifications happen, you're very frustrated, right? I tried to negotiate as much as I could with opposing counsel and they just wouldn't budge. And I felt like, look, I built this business from the ground up and my plan is to sell this business in the short term, there is no way I'm gonna give up my name. And the thing is that that's mistake number one when you're going into business. You have to take emotion and ego out of everything. For these past almost 2 years now, I have been fighting, paying lawyer fees, paying court fees just to try and keep my name. And at the end of the day, I could have used all that time and effort to rebrand, get new different products in there, But I had my ego in the way with that. But that's why I want to go ahead and discuss it with you because it's finally over. I'm finally away from this actual opposition case, this court case, and I can start from square one. And the thing is, even though this might seem like a bad situation, there's a great silver lining to this. Because even though I was depressed that I had to change a name that resonates within my industry, I still have the same products. I still have the great customers I can reach out to and ask feedback to. And I still have this YouTube community where I can go ahead and bring you on this journey of having to do a whole rebrand, coming out brand guidelines, new packaging, and trying to transfer over my ASINs so I still have the same reviews, sales data, advertising data. So there's a lot of exciting things that are going to come to this channel because I want real-time feedback from you guys. So please subscribe to his YouTube channel. Comment below as far as what your thoughts are on my situation here. Again, the future is wary. I don't know where it's going to go ahead and take me, but I— what I do know is that it's going to be exciting no matter what. So again, like this video, subscribe to this YouTube channel, but until next time, guys, peace.
