Brand and Manufacturer

This guide covers the brand side of an integration: how brands are recorded, how products are attributed to them exactly, how authorization decides which accounts may list which brands, and what manufacturer accounts do with the API. Endpoint detail is in Brand and Manufacturer Endpoints. The catalog mechanics brands attach to are in Catalog.

Goal and prerequisites

Goal: every product names the brand that actually made it, spelled the way the brand's own record spells it, listed only by accounts authorized to sell that brand: so a buyer choosing by brand gets the genuine product from a seller entitled to sell it.

Prerequisites: catalog access; for listing a brand's products, the authorization described under Brand authorization below; for manufacturer accounts, an issued key under the standard access rules (Getting Started).

The brand record

The Platform maintains a directory of brands. Each brand has one record: its name as the brand styles it, its identifying details, and its presentation assets: and that record is the authority every product attribution is checked against.

• When you supply products, supply the brand name exactly as the directory holds it. Check the name through Brand and Manufacturer Endpoints before submitting; do not submit a variation and let it be sorted out later.
• A name that does not match any directory record is an exception: flag it in your own process, and resolve it with the Platform before listing. Do not create near-duplicate brand attributions: "Example Brand" versus "Example Brand Inc." versus "example brand" fragments search, splits brand pages, and makes authorization unenforceable, because the gate can only check the name you submitted.
• When you display a brand: on a product card, a storefront page, a feed: use the record's own assets and name. Do not substitute logos from other sources or invent brand pages for names with no record.

This is also a feed-quality rule (Feeds and Bulk Data): normalize brand names on your side, before submission, and a clean feed lists faster.

Brand authorization

Not every account may list every brand. For brands that require it, an account must hold authorization: evidence the brand or its distributor permits the account to sell its products, such as a distributor account, a wholesale relationship, or the brand's written authorization: recorded with the Platform before listings go live.

• The check runs at listing time: an account without authorization for a brand that requires it cannot list under that brand. The response states the block and what documentation resolves it; surface both to the account holder in your tooling rather than reporting a generic failure.
• Authorization is per brand and per account. Being authorized for one brand confers nothing for another, and one account's authorization never covers a second account.
• Your integration does not decide authorization and cannot waive it. It submits listings, reads the outcome, and shows the path to authorization. The governing program terms are in the Brand Gating Policy and the brand program documents in Brands and Franchises.

Manufacturer accounts

Manufacturer and supplier accounts are the accounts the API is issued to (Developer Agreement; API Access Tiers), and a manufacturer integrating directly typically does three things

1. Supplies the authoritative product data. Names, descriptions, images, and specifications from the manufacturer outrank the same fields from any other source when records conflict, because the manufacturer is where the facts originate. Supply through the catalog (Catalog) or at volume through feeds (Feeds and Bulk Data), keeping product codes stable across every submission.
2. Keeps its brand record correct. Name styling, assets, and the brand's own details: corrections go through Brand and Manufacturer Endpoints or support@aapawz.com, and propagate to every listing that carries the brand.
3. Reads its brand's performance. Sales and performance reporting through Analytics Endpoints, scoped to the manufacturer's own brand, as Analytics describes. Where the brand operates a minimum advertised price or similar program, monitoring reads the same pricing data of record described in Pricing.

Catalog corrections follow the same channel: a manufacturer that finds its products misdescribed raises the correction with the specific product identifiers, rather than submitting duplicate corrected listings beside the wrong ones.

Intellectual property

Brand integration carries the sharpest intellectual-property duties in the API

• List only genuine products under a brand's name. Counterfeit goods under a real brand name are the most serious catalog violation there is; supply of infringing product leads to disconnection, not a warning (see Security and Compliance).
• Use a brand's trademarks, logos, and product imagery only as the brand's program permits and only to describe genuine products of that brand.
• If your supply chain's provenance for a branded product is uncertain, resolve it before listing. "Our supplier said it was genuine" is not provenance.

Failure handling

• Listing blocked for authorization: the response names the brand and the missing authorization. Show it, link the remedy, and do not re-submit in a loop: the state changes when the authorization is recorded, which you can check through Brand and Manufacturer Endpoints.
• Brand name not recognized: check your spelling against the directory record character by character; case and punctuation in brand styling are meaningful. If the brand genuinely has no record, contact support@aapawz.com rather than approximating one.
• Attribution corrected by the Platform: your submitted name was normalized to the directory record. Fix the name in your own system at the source, or every future submission repeats the correction.

What to build

• Listing tooling: brand lookup before submission, authorization status per brand shown before a listing is attempted, and blocked listings presented with their specific remedy.
• Manufacturer tooling: product data supplied once, correctly, through the feed path; brand performance read from the analytics resources; corrections filed with identifiers, not duplicates.