Legal to discriminate?

[ssgumby]

In the US, does anyone know if it is legal for a manufacturer to discriminate as to who can sell their products?

Scenario:

Manufacturer XYZ produces product FOO.

Manufacturer XYZ tells all distributors that they are not permitted to sale to online only stores, that this product can only be sold in brick and mortar stores. If the distributor does not honor this, they will be banned from selling the product. If a B&M store also has an online presence, they are not permitted to sell it online.

Is that legal?

[bwnbwn]

Yes it is legal there are many manufacturers that don't want their products online as it tends to drive down the profit margin of the product, then the manufacturer gets in hot water with the brick and mortar stores who have kept the manufacturer in business before there was the WWW.

[ssgumby]

"tends to drive down the profit margin" .. This is exactly what they say, but in reality how is that true?

Yes, I sell it cheaper than the B&M, BUT I have the added cost of shipping tacked on raising the true out the door cost above that which they can get it for in the B&M.

The thing is, we sell it because it is not available in everyday stores, it is only in local mom and pop specialty stores and we serve the rural areas who have no access to it.

[rachel123]

ssgumby,

it is legal. We have the same problem, to the extent that I wonder if we aren't thinking of the same company. In our niche, many local mom & pop stores have closed due to the recession and other factors. Not to mention, that it is such a narrow niche that expanses of rural areas have never had access to the product.

The company in question seems to blame online retailers for the decline in b&M shops, and in some cases that may be true. All I know is that I was inspired to start an online business after I was unable to find niche items within 250 miles of my home, and that was in the early 90s - WAY before modern ecommerce even existed.

But, being based in LA, I guess it is hard for some people/companies to understand that places exist in the US that cannot support a B&M niche shop, regardless of online competitors, and they are effectively denying all of those customers access to their product.

Frustrating, but legal. MAP is one thing, I get that, I'm fine with MAP - but this is a totally different thing.

[bwnbwn]

ssgumby I was wanting to tell ya a way around it and from your last post I can as I have the exact same problem but got a work around.

If your both an online store and BMB this is what you can do or what I did.

I took off the buy buttons and added this line. "Please call 777-777-7777 to order this product from our store." I left the page up so it can get indexed and searches can come in from the search to the product pages. All have the Call Number.

Now you not selling it online but from the BMB and you can set your price as you see fit. It has worked for me increased the calls but we selling them.

Now you can take it a step further and build a page not connected to any link on the site with the buy buttons on the items, then when you get a call ask them to go to this URL to either place the order or to reorder the item but please keep it quiet, you can explain why, and send them the url in the order.

This is working for me.

[ssgumby]

Rachel123 - it definitely sounds like we are talking about the same company.

[MrHard]

Strange that manufacturers care at all. They get the same price no matter what a retailer sells it for.

I'm surprised more manufacturers don't tell complainers too stop whining, unless it's WalMart who can sell so many it would break some back if they got nasty.