Fabric Type Now Required for Amazon Bulk Listing Uploads

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Amazon had recently announced changes to its listing requirements in the Apparel category. “Fabric Type Designation,” a previously optional entry, is now required when conducting a bulk upload. Additionally, the entry format for this feature has been updated from using a slash(/) separation to now using a comma(,). 

Ensuring that your data meets new criteria will prevent a listing update failure. This recent change takes effect for the following Amazon marketplaces: US, UK, CN, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, SE, PL, JP, and IN.

When making product listing updates manually, you’ll see this new change to the accepted valid value for Fabric Type reflected in red, as shown below.

Listing update failure example, fabric type not properly specified.

For sellers, it is essential to stay on top of the changes Amazon makes to its valid values to avoid update failures, which can cause delays in getting your listings live. Without an active product listing, you’ll be missing out on valuable sales. Luckily, you can avoid this by simply adhering to the updated requirement.

Prior to this most recent update, the fabric type designation did not require the percentage composition of the material. After this new update, any products that don’t specify material designations will default to 100% for the primary material.

For products where the material composition was previously entered, the values must be listed accordingly:

  1. Material type followed by percentage
  2. Comma separated values
  3. Entered in order from greatest to least composition

For example, your Fabric Type entry would look like this: polyester 85%, rayon 10%, spandex 5%

Listing Update Failure Error Codes and Their Meanings

Failure to enter fabric type designations based on the requirements above will result in an update failure, and you’ll receive one of the following error codes:

  • INVALID FABRIC_TYPE STRUCTURE: The value is not in the expected structure, so double-check commas, empty spaces, percentages, etc.
  • INVALID FABRIC_TYPE MATERIAL PERCENTAGE FORMAT: The percentage of [fiber name] indicator should not contain more than 3 decimal places.
  • MISSING FABRIC_TYPE MATERIAL PERCENTAGE: The value of [fabric_type] does not contain a percentage indicator.
  • INVALID FABRIC_TYPE MATERIAL ORDER: Sort fabrics in descending percentages.
  • FABRIC_TYPE TOTAL SUM VIOLATION: The percentages of each fabric or within each layer do not add up to 100%.
  • INVALID FABRIC_TYPE MATERIAL: This can mean one of three things⎯The value [fiber name] used is not a valid value; Do not use abbreviations; Exclude multiple descriptions (Organic combed spun cotton). 

For more details on the updated fabric type designation requirements and to help resolve any issues, you can refer to Amazon’s Fabric Type Troubleshooting Guide.

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If you learned a thing or two from this blog post, we recommend checking out: How to Create a Great Product Listing on Amazon.

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