Why Protecting Your Brand Through Compliance Is Worth the Fight
If you want to sell a product for $50 but your distributors keep selling it for $30 on Amazon, that’s a problem. So what do you do? Nicely ask them to stop short-selling your products, pretty please? If only. “The biggest challenges that I’m seeing manufacturers have today is their inability to be able to control the sales of the products—particularly on online marketplaces,” said Whitney Gibson, Leader of Online Seller Enforcement for Pattern’s legal partner, Vorys.
There’s little doubt as to why: the online consumer is savvier than ever. Hopping across multiple eCommerce marketplaces to find the best deal is the status quo, says Chris Vincent, EVP of International. They don’t care where the cheapest price comes from as long as they save money. “So if the price is cheaper on Amazon and it’s actually underneath the price that the manufacturer may want to sell at, that’s a big issue for brands,” Vincent said. “They’re really struggling to understand how they would manage that going forward.”
Compliance maintains brand integrity
Suppressed pricing can lead to revenue losses and, if you’re not actively fighting against it, CRAPped out products. At Pattern, we don’t just give brands the tools to create a MAP pricing standard for their products—we give them the tools to enforce it. In fact, our partners average 90% compliance in their first year with us. “Compliance is a really big deal when it comes to selling online,” said Jared Mason, a Director of Brand Management. “Brands have an image—the story that they’re trying to tell about themselves—and compliance is what makes sure that they can be consistent with that message.”
We also help brands ensure that they have an ideal product experience online. This helps them create a uniform, recognizable experience for consumers that ultimately helps enforce compliance, said Jeff Cedeno, a Director of Brand Management.
Compliance drives growth
Many brands don’t know where to begin when it comes to enforcing MAP compliance, much less what achieving compliance could do for their brand in terms of growth. It begins with effective price management across all eCommerce spaces.
“What we’re helping them do now is figure out how they engage with marketplaces effectively,” Vincent said. “This helps to drive a commercial brand outcome for them where they can control what’s going on out in multiple jurisdictions.”
Brands want to understand their prices across multiple marketplaces, says Melanie Alder, Pattern Founder/Chief Investment Officer. That’s why we built proprietary software that delivers those key data points directly to them. “If you’re trying to protect your price and you’ve got a MAP policy in place, then you need to understand who’s selling your products at what price and who’s breaking your policy,” she said. Learn more about how our software can help you achieve compliance and fight MAP-policy breakers by contacting us.