Exclusive Manufacture Product

Manufacture holds back product just for them

[sleepy_eye]

We do online and brick and mortar.
Today I found out one of the companies we sell quite well is pulling a product line from their vendors and selling it on their website exclusively. All their vendors, including us, have sold this product line for about 3 years now. Now suddenly they are going to sell it just on their website. Anyone successfully fight this or have experience with it?

[HRoth]

They are not going to sell it to brick-and-mortars either? One of my suppliers at one point announced that they were no longer going to allow their vendors to sell online--they wanted to be the only online presence. If you bought their stuff, they made you sign a thing saying you wouldn't sell it online. I just sold it online anyway. One guy I know quit selling their stuff and went to their competitor and still badmouths them any chance he gets. Eventually, they realized this was a stupid policy and changed it.

[sleepy_eye]

They are not going to sell it to brick-and-mortars either?

Yep.
Another thing bothers me is that lots of manufactures now boldly place their website on each product. So when the customer gets their item in the mail, exchanges become confused and or they make their next purchase with them thinking its us.

[HRoth]

I had that problem some years ago with a product, so I replaced their labels with my own.

I don't know what you can do if they are not going to sell to any retailers anymore.

[Digmen1]

Its a tricky one.
I dont think the manufacturer will sell as many direct as he could via lots of B & M shops.

I am a small manufacturer and its hard to get retailers to stock your product.
They want to buy from distributors that put their markup on, then there's the retailers markup.

I agree, we should all be honorable in business, but it sometimes hard.