California, USA
I wanted to see if you could help me see if I have a valid anti trust case
We are a retailer who started off selling online and then opened two brick and mortar stores. Online is still 90% of our family business.
I just received an email about 9 days ago from one of our suppliers who distributes 3 of the popular brands we sell saying:
"As of this upcoming June 5th, 09 we will be entering an exclusive online/ media partnership that will require us to take our three brands from your website interface"
This partnership is with our main competitor who is much larger than us and is the biggest on the net in this industry.
We started our business with these brands and they are a core part of our business
The distributor and online retailer are clearly working together to take our family business out.
This Distributor also recently launched their own online e-commerce website so they can also sell direct making themselves a retailer as well in addition to the competitor of ours they are partnering with.
This is going to severely hurt our business.
I wanted to see if you could help me see if I have a valid anti trust case
We are a retailer who started off selling online and then opened two brick and mortar stores. Online is still 90% of our family business.
I just received an email about 9 days ago from one of our suppliers who distributes 3 of the popular brands we sell saying:
"As of this upcoming June 5th, 09 we will be entering an exclusive online/ media partnership that will require us to take our three brands from your website interface"
This partnership is with our main competitor who is much larger than us and is the biggest on the net in this industry.
We started our business with these brands and they are a core part of our business
The distributor and online retailer are clearly working together to take our family business out.
This Distributor also recently launched their own online e-commerce website so they can also sell direct making themselves a retailer as well in addition to the competitor of ours they are partnering with.
This is going to severely hurt our business.