Product Images and Copy for Resellers: What You May Use and Where to Get It

7 August 2026 · The Glow Trade

A new online seller builds her first K-beauty listings the fast way: brand photos from the brand's website, product copy from a Korean retailer, and a before-and-after image from social media because it shows the effect. Three weeks later a marketplace flags the listings, the brand's EU distributor sends a polite but firm email, and the before-and-after turns out to be a claims violation wearing a testimonial. Every asset she used belonged to someone, and the licence to use none of them came with the stock.

Product content is intellectual property, and reselling a product does not automatically include the right to republish its marketing. The good news is that the trade has a working system for this, and it starts with one question asked at the right time: what does the supplier provide, with what usage rights, in writing?

The short version

Brand photos, copy and videos are copyrighted works: you need a licence to republish them, and most brands grant resellers one through their official asset packs or distributor materials, not through screenshots.
The safest asset chain is the authorised one: brand or EU distributor asset packs, or your wholesaler's provided data, with the usage scope confirmed, because marketplace document checks ask exactly this.
Your own photos and copy are always safe and often better: the pack shot you take and the routine description you write cannot be flagged by anyone, and they let you control the claims.

What the law quietly says

Copyright attaches to the photo, the video and the text from the moment they exist, no registration needed. Using them on your commercial listings is republication, and doing it without permission is infringement whether or not the brand ever complains. "But everyone does it" is true and useless: enforcement is selective, marketplaces run automated checks, and the seller with the complaint has no defence, only a takedown and a warning count.

The brand's tolerance has a logic worth understanding: brands generally want resellers to use their assets, because it sells product, which is why official asset packs and distributor portals exist. What they do not want is distorted assets, wrong-market claims, or their imagery next to prices and messages they cannot control, which is why the licence comes through the channel and not through Google Images.

The asset chain, from safest to riskiest

Top of the chain: the brand's or EU distributor's official asset pack, images and copy produced for resellers, with usage scope stated. This is the gold standard: compliant claims, current packaging, and a paper trail for marketplace checks. Next: your wholesaler's product data, provided for their customers, with the same question asked once, "what may I use, and where". Then: your own production, pack shots, textures, routine photos, which cost a Saturday and pay forever, because they are yours, they are unique in the search results, and no competitor's listing looks like them.

The bottom of the chain, where trouble lives: the brand's consumer website (made for consumers, not licensed for your shop), other retailers' listings (their theft does not license yours), Korean e-commerce copy (wrong claims for the EU, per the claims rules), and social-media content (someone else's work and often someone else's face).

What your listing must contain regardless

Separate from what you may use is what you must show, and since December 2024 the General Product Safety Regulation makes online offers carry the manufacturer's details and the EU responsible operator's details, plus the safety information the product's label carries. In practice: the RP name and address that sit on the pack belong in the listing, the warnings belong in the listing, and the product identity must be unambiguous. This is the part of listing compliance nobody's marketing department tells you about, and it dovetails with the data checklist in the product data article.

The working setup

ASSET WORKFLOW, per brand you stock

1. ASK the supplier/brand: asset pack? usage scope (web,
   social, marketplaces, print)? in writing, once, filed.
2. DOWNLOAD the official pack; note the version date
   (packaging changes make old assets wrong, not just old)
3. COPY: use the EU-facing text, run it through the claims
   rewrite; never paste Korean/global marketing raw
4. OWN SHOTS: one pack shot + one texture shot per hero SKU,
   consistent background; yours forever, zero flag risk
5. LISTING SKELETON per product: identity (EAN, size),
   RP details, warnings, then the sales copy
6. REVIEW quarterly: assets current? claims clean?
   marketplace document requests answered in <48h

Questions buyers ask

The brand's Instagram has perfect photos. Can I repost them?

Not without permission, and the permission question is exactly the asset-pack question: many brands happily authorise resellers to use social content within the same scope as their pack, and they say so in one email. Without that email, a repost is republication of someone's copyrighted photo, often with a model's or creator's likeness in it, which adds personality rights to the problem. The one email converts all of it from risk to resource, and brands answer it fast because they want you selling.

Do I need different assets for marketplaces versus my own shop?

The usage scope decides: some asset licences cover your website but not marketplaces, some cover everything, and the time to know is before the marketplace's documentation request, not after. Marketplace listings also face the platform's own rules on top of copyright: image standards, no-watermark rules, and the document checks described in the marketplace guide. The robust setup is scope-confirmed brand assets for the catalogue plus your own hero shots everywhere, because your own images need no scope at all.

Is translated supplier copy "my" content?

No: a translation of a copyrighted text is a derivative work, and the rights situation follows the original. The practical reading is kinder: if the supplier provides copy for reseller use, translating it within that use is normally inside the intent, but translating a brand's consumer website copy is not magically licensed because you moved it to German. Either way, the claims rewrite is yours to do regardless, because even fully licensed copy was not necessarily written for the EU claims framework, and that check is what the claims article is for.