Seller Beware: Why [span]Running Your Own Seller Central[/span] Is Mandatory in 2025

The simple thesis RivrHub operates off of in relation to Seller Central management is that first-party data should be owned by the first-party relationship holder: i.e. your brand.

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When you hand over Seller Central management in Amazon to an Agency, you are losing massive amounts of value that your brand should own in the first place. Same rule applies to Google & Meta Ads Accounts, Email Platforms, and any other software of your choice. From a real-world perspective, would you give your retail distribution partner the rights to your internal customer database? No, of course not.

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Somehow in the digital world these rules of ownership have become grey areas, but we feel in the long-term our perspective on this will be vindicated.

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A beauty brand we once represented had doubled revenue in two years. Great story until an acquirer discovered that every listing, every review, and every PPC campaign sat inside the agency’s master Seller Central.

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The deal price dropped nearly 25 percent overnight. Negotiations stalled while lawyers negotiated an Amazon account transfer that should have taken place years earlier.

Running sales through an agency’s storefront feels convenient up front, but the long-term costs pile up fast.

1. Margin Bleed

• Cause of Pain:
  The agency deducts fees—sometimes their own markup—before you ever see net proceeds.
• How It Hurts:
  Contribution margin looks lower in financials, which can depress valuation multiples.

2. Data Blindness

• Cause of Pain:
  Limited access to search term logs, order reports, and DSP audience data.
• How It Hurts:
  Growth teams can’t build accurate lifetime value models or proper attribution.

3. Catalog Hostage Risk

• Cause of Pain:
  The agency “owns” the ASIN relationship inside Brand Registry.
• How It Hurts:
  A single contract dispute can instantly strand your entire catalog.

4. Due Diligence Drag

• Cause of Pain:
  Buyers want clean seller performance metrics tied directly to the actual brand.
• How It Hurts:
  Extra escrow, claw-back provisions, and sometimes a lower earn-out.

5. Operational Bottlenecks

• Cause of Pain:
  Slow change tickets for price updates or inventory forecasting, with little incentive for agencies to act fast.
• How It Hurts:
  Missed Buy Box control windows and lost rank during key demand spikes.

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Most founders never see these costs in a P&L, because they’re a byproduct of unrealized potential. Instead, they compound every quarter and are only felt as competitors slowly, steadily creep ahead of you.

Let’s flip the picture. Brands that fully own Seller Central enjoy:

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1. Total performance visibility
   Hourly access to real search term data, session counts, and account health lets teams fine-tune bids and content faster than competitors.
   
2. Direct customer data
   Order‐ID–level insight feeds LTV projections, DSP retargeting, and post-purchase upsell flows.
   
3. Instant catalog changes
   Need to test a glossy video on your hero image? Push it live in minutes. No ticket queue.
   
4. Stronger contribution margin
   All referral fees, FBA costs, and price promotions roll into one ledger, making true margin crystal clear.
   
5. Exit-ready documentation
   A buyer sees a stand-alone, clean account with positive Seller Performance, tight Buy Box control, and verified Brand Registry. No hidden liabilities.
   
   

The implications of this ownership are pretty obvious to most brand owners. In a million small ways, your team is better able to make strategic, informed decisions about your on-platform strategy based on your holistic goals.

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The risk of vanity metrics and performance reporting is magnified tenfold when your agency has the complete control over the Seller Central account, and knows how to manipulate the data. 

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This is, of course, never a problem of dishonesty on the part of the agencies. Most fee-based agencies are high-integrity, honest people. 

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We view it as a problem of incentives, which inevitably will result in similarly inaccurate and inappropriate outcomes.

Most of the time, agencies own the seller central as a sort of “stick” to keep you tied to them while they manage your account.

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This problem is magnified when their fee structure is improperly aligned with their incentive to serve your brands’ strategic objectives.

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Percentage of ad spend fees, “performance-enhancements”, holiday payouts all look like they work for you, but they work better for the agencies. Why not tie compensation to your margin?

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“There’s so much outside of our control in your margins!” is the common refrain.Nevertheless, when you tie their compensation to gross sales or ad spend, and every decision tilts toward “more,” more budget, more discounts, more hero-ASIN giveaways, regardless of what it does to contribution margin.

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1) % of Ad Spend

• Incentivizes:
  Highest possible daily budget, even if ACoS creeps north of break-even.
• At the Expense of:
  TACoS guardrails and rapid elimination of wasteful terms.
  

2) % of Gross Sales

• Incentivizes:
  Short-term revenue pops through flash discounts, deep coupons, and aggressive bundling.
• At the Expense of:
  Net profit preservation, sustainable LTV, healthy price architecture, and strategic loss leaders.‍
  

3) Flat Retainer + % Bonus on “New Sales”

• Incentivizes:
  Quick wins on low-margin SKUs or clearance inventory.
• At the Expense of:
  Balanced catalog growth that protects ASP and brand equity.

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Let’s imagine for instance an agency with a flat fee payment, plus 15 % of monthly ad spend, plus a holiday “growth bonus.” November roll-out would look something like this:

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1. 40 % off Lightning Deal scheduled for Black Friday jacks up the topline.
2. Ad budgets doubled three days prior “to stoke the algorithm.”

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Their follow up reporting deck highlights a 62 % revenue surge and “best-ever market share.” Sounds nice.

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But in this situation, the company would make a killing on their bonus structures even if your gross margin fell from 28 % to 9 %. Maybe this aligns with your strategy, but maybe not. It’s pretty easy to create a compelling narrative to support the decisions: “Our CAC is higher for this holiday period but we’ll make it up on the back-end with repeat orders.

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”But inevitably that logic requires more waiting-and-seeing, more fees paid to the agency, and probably even your own diligent follow up, if you’re ever going to see a report that proves the “repeat-customer” thesis.

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Meanwhile, the agency’s bonus hits their bank, even if weeks later the CFO learns FBA fees, coupons, and ads basically wiped out December profit. If the brand’s goal was margin protection, perhaps due to macro or a new product launch, they’re now in a very bad spot; and you could make the case that the agency’s goal was simply to chase a percentage payout before year-end.

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Net result

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• Agency: record month, fat bonus, glowing case study.

• Brand: depleted cash cushion, price integrity damage, delayed budget.

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Until compensation lines up with contribution margin, not vanity metrics, the agency’s reporting cadence and “performance” decisions will always conflict with what matters to you: profitable, defensible growth.

Because RivrHub buys your inventory up front, we are extremely motivated to drive profitable growth and build your distribution strategy exactly the way you would. Our margin only appears when your product sells at better margins than you’d need, so every ad bid, promo, and listing tweak must lift contribution margin rather than inflate vanity revenue.

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This is a radically different and much more difficult approach than most agencies are willing to try. We carry the stock, run the channels, and get paid from the same cash flow you do, which means no spend-at-all-costs mentality and zero hidden fees. If you want a partner whose incentives lock perfectly to yours, let’s talk.

Check all that apply:

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• The storefront legal entity belongs to your agency or distributor.
• Brand Registry lists the agency email as Rights Owner.
• You cannot pull yesterday’s search term report without requesting it.
• FBA fees appear as estimates because actual data lives in the agency ledger.
• Your potential buyer asked for an account health screenshot and you don’t have one.

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If you checked any of these boxes and that feels unacceptable to you, run this article by your agency. Ask them what they think. We’d love constructive feedback on our point of view here.

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Or, you can book a quick chat with us, and we can walk you through exactly how we’d migrate your Seller Central to your control:

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Book a Free Account Audit

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Seller Central account ownership is not a back-office detail; it is the growth lever that determines margin, agility, and final exit value. Brands that own Seller Central move quicker, spend smarter, and sell higher.

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Take back the keys. Drive your own future.