The success of our retailers when marketing and selling our products, as well as brand image, are important. A situation has arisen where multiple retailers are selling the same IDEA/KURVE styles in the Amazon.com online retail marketplace. The result is drastic price competition, with retailers undercutting each other's pricing. Normally we would not interfere with retailer's pricing, however in this particular situation, the retailers involved are suffering from margin-squeeze, and it is also degrading our brand image.
An option we considered was to ban the sale of our products on Amazon.com altogether, however we feel this is too drastic a step. While most of our retail customers purchase our products from local "brick and mortar" retail stores, we also have some consumers who enjoy purchasing from Amazon.com. Often these consumers live in remote areas and their best option is to buy online. We also considered awarding the right to be the sole-retailer for all of our styles on Amazon.com, however we feel this is not fair for some of our other retailers who have already started selling there.
To be fair to our retailers selling on Amazon.com, we are instead implementing a "First to market for a style" policy, for sales through Amazon.com. In short, the first retailer to list a specific style at Amazon.com will be the only seller allowed to sell that style. Other retailers will not be able to sell the exact same style at a later date on Amazon.com.
IDEA/KURVE sells hundreds of different styles, and we offer new styles almost every week. As such, we feel there is a large enough variety of styles to enable multiple retailers selling our various products on Amazon.com without directly competing with each other on price on specific styles.
IDEA/Kurve does our best to be efficient with our manufacturing costs to keep our prices as low as possible for you, our valued retailer. As you may know, this is a challenge when making clothing in the USA. We stand behind our product's design and quality, and we hope you and your retail customers recognize this too. Sales at MSRP is preferred, however we understand this doesn't always make sense when competing with other brand names who are selling similar styles. Often these other styles are cheaply-made imports. In this situation, we recommend making it clear in your listings that IDEA/Kurve products are made in the USA using high quality materials and superior construction techniques. Nevertheless, we understand that retailers, including those selling on Amazon.com, often need to sell below MSRP. This is fine, as long as the pricing is not so low that it degrades the image of our brand.
If you are an Amazon.com retailer, or are considering becoming one, please read the policy below carefully.
Policy:
a.The first retailer to list a specific IDEA/KURVE style on Amazon.com has the right to be the sole-retailer of that style. Only one retailer may sell a particular IDEA/KURVE style on Amazon.com at any given time. Retailer instructions:
i.When preparing to list a new style on Amazon.com, verify it is not already being sold by another vendor.
ii.Once you have listed the style on Amazon.com, send an email to info@ideacollections.com to register on the same day it has been listed. Please include a link to your new listing.
1.We will verify your listing, and send a reply email acknowledging you as the official retailer for the particular style.
2.We will not reserve or hold a style, or a list of styles, for future listings for a retailer on Amazon.com. You must have already verified the style is not being sold by another vendor, and have listed and activated it, for us to add you and the style to the registry.
3.IDEA will maintain a registry of retailers actively selling specific styles on Amazon.com.
4.If a retailer discontinues carrying a particular style on Amazon.com, another retailer may begin listing and registering the item for sale.
iii.If you are the sole-retailer for a particular style on Amazon.com, and notice another retailer listing the same style, inform info@ideacollections.com. Please include a link to the listing. We will remind the seller of our policy and inform them to discontinue their listing. If the problem persists, Idea will close their account.
b.Pricing shall be no less than 25% below MSRP. This including sales, as well as the combination of garments into multi-piece outfits. In this second case, the price for the outfit shall be no less than 25% of the total MSRP for the styles that comprise the outfit. Please adhere to this policy to help maintain the brand-image.
c.If you are a retailer and begin listing styles already listed and registered by one of our other retailers, you will receive an email from us informing you of this policy, and a request to remove the listing within 5 days. If the listing is not removed, your account with IDEA will be closed.
d.Amazon.com is one of many online marketplaces. IDEA reserves the right to apply this policy to additional online marketplaces in the future.
Thank you for your cooperation.
To retailers already selling our products on Amazon.com, as of 7/25/2015:
Please send a list of all the styles you currently list on Amazon.com, and the prices at which you are selling the products to info@ideacollections.com by August 3, 2015. Please include a link to your "Seller Information" page as well. As stated in our new policy above, prices should be no less than 25% of MSRP.
IDEA will register your company as the seller of individual styles on Amazon.com. There will be some styles being sold by multiple vendors, and we will divide them up randomly and evenly. We will inform you if another vendor has been assigned the right to sell a particular style by August 7th, 2015.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.