Turning Unauthorized Sales Challenges into Brand Growth Opportunities

Online marketplaces have lowered the barriers for anyone to create a seller account. For brands, that means a surge in unauthorized sellers riding on brand equity, undercutting pricing, and disrupting carefully built strategies. What looks like a handful of rogue listings quickly snowballs into margin erosion, confused customers, and weakened channel relationships.

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The challenge doesn't end at stopping bad actors. It’s the long-term solution, giving growth and eCommerce leaders the intelligence they need to see where leaks are happening, how pricing is shifting in real time, and which sellers are driving channel conflict.

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That’s why Marq AI built its Unauthorized Sales module. Charles Kim, Unauthorized Sales Product Manager, sat down to share how the solution was designed, the intelligence it unlocks for brands, and why stopping unauthorized sales is only the first step toward long-term growth.

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The Problem We Set Out to Solve

Q: What problem was the unauthorized sales module designed to solve?
A: In our brand protection work, we saw countless listings that weren’t counterfeit but still caused major disruption. These unauthorized sales were legal, yet they undermined pricing strategies, eroded margins, and confused customers. What brands lacked most was visibility into who these sellers were and how they operated online.

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We realized unauthorized sales required a different approach: one focused on growth and channel performance, not just IP enforcement. That’s why Marq AI built real-time price monitoring at the core of its Unauthorized Sales Solution. With visibility into who is selling, at what price, and where, brands gain the intelligence they need to protect margins and fuel growth.

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Q: Why start with price monitoring?
A: When we spoke with brands across different industries, the same frustration kept coming up: 

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“We just want to know how pricing is moving in the market, and who’s driving it.”

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That insight shaped our direction. You can’t solve unauthorized sales without first seeing the full picture first. Who are the sellers, what are they listing, and how are those prices shifting in real time? Only once brands had that visibility, customers felt they could finally make faster, smarter decisions grounded in data about their online pricing strategy. 

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Key Unauthorized Sales Features

Q: What does the dashboard actually show?
A: We designed the dashboard to be simple: one place where you can see every seller, every listing, and every price point tied to your brand. It highlights repeat offenders, shows you which platforms drive the most issues, and even flags sellers that might be violating marketplace rules. It’s not just about surfacing problems. It’s about giving teams the intelligence to act quickly and strategically.

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Q: What are the core features for unauthorized sales?

A: There are four main features that give growth teams the intelligence they need to act:

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1. AI Model Matching

We found that most brands were still tracking SKU-level violations manually, a process that drains time, adds cost, and leaves plenty of room for error. Existing tools weren’t accurate enough to trust, which meant wasted effort and unreliable data. That’s why we built a model purpose-built for SKU-level matching. With 94%+ accuracy, (sometimes even better than the marketplaces’ own models!) Marq AI gives you a reliable source of truth so your team can focus on protecting margins, not fixing data.

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2. Hourly Price Monitoring

In the gray market, pricing can change by the hour, and keeping up manually is almost impossible. That’s why we made a tool that tracks MAP/MSRP every hour across Amazon, eBay, and Walmart, so you see violations the moment they happen. We’re putting a stop to those endless spreadsheets blocking you from actually protecting your margins. 

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3. Scaled Whitelist Management

When we built our anti-counterfeiting tools, we had brands register their authorized sellers into our dashboard. So when customers tried out our unauthorized sales module, we found a pattern popped up. Sometimes even “good” distributors were reselling online in places they weren’t supposed to be. With MarqVision, you can spot those cases right away, take the harder conversations offline, and actually clarify your pricing policies with the evidence in hand.

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4. Global Seller Insight (Match & Dialogue) 

We’ve built one of the largest seller databases in the world with over 10 million sellers, including in markets that are notoriously hard to track. And chances are, if a reseller is disrupting your business, they’ve probably done it elsewhere too. With MarqVision, you can tap into that intelligence, uncover who these sellers really are, and connect the dots on supply chain leaks or repeat offenders. It’s about turning raw seller data into insights you can actually use.

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Q: How does this change the day-to-day for growth teams?

Before, teams were spending hours hunting down listings, tracking prices by hand, and struggling to prove impact. Now, everything lives on one platform. Sellers can be flagged, results quantified, and insights shared internally without the manual grind.

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It also makes cross-functional work seamless. Legal teams can stay in the same platform as eCommerce, focusing on brand protection and digging into deeper cases the growth team flags for investigation. No more taking it offline, sending endless emails, or struggling to stay aligned.

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Design Challenges and Solutions

Q: What was the biggest challenge in designing the solution?
A: Honestly, the toughest part was proving impact. Brands wanted to know: “How is this actually helping me recover margin, protect revenue, or keep my channels healthy?” And that’s not easy, because market prices are always moving.

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Q: And how did you overcome that?

A: The way we solved it was by working side by side with customers. Specifically, we securely connected and shared our data with theirs and demonstrated actions that led to real outcomes. It wasn’t about perfect numbers, it was about making the value visible.

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Future Direction

Marq AI’s Unauthorized Sales module is evolving beyond detection. It’s becoming a decision-support system that arms growth and eCommerce leaders with brand intelligence: market-wide visibility, actionable insights, and the ability to turn unauthorized sales risk into a driver of smarter strategy.

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Our mission is simple: help brands protect margins today while giving them the clarity to capture tomorrow’s growth.

To see how Marq AI surfaces brand intelligence for your business, visit the unauthorized sales page and request a free demo today.