Pricing protection is usually framed as something that benefits the brand. It's easy to see why: an RRP (recommended retail price) or MAP (minimum advertised price) policy keeps a brand's positioning consistent across every retailer selling it. What gets talked about far less is who else benefits when that pricing is actually enforced, and who pays the price when it isn't.
At its core, it's an agreement that trade buyers won't sell a product below a set floor price, in exchange for access to that product through an authorised channel. It's not price-fixing between competitors: it's a vertical agreement between a brand (or its distributor) and the retailers or buyers it supplies, intended to protect the value of the product itself.
Once one buyer in a network starts discounting below the agreed floor, whether deliberately or because a distributor lets it slide, it rarely stays contained. Other buyers see their margin being undercut on a product they're selling at the "correct" price, and the rational response is to start discounting too, just to stay competitive. This spreads quickly. Within a short window, a product's market price has quietly collapsed, and every retailer who did the right thing has lost margin they were never going to get back.
It doesn't stop at margin. A brand whose pricing has visibly unravelled in one market often finds it harder to bring in new premium retail partners, since the product's perceived value has taken a hit. Everyone downstream ends up worse off, including the buyers who never discounted in the first place.
Because pricing protection only works if it's actually enforced across the whole network, we vet who gets access to stock, not just who places the biggest order. Every trade buyer we bring on is assessed for pricing discipline before they're able to buy, and we hold that same standard consistently, not selectively. It's a slower way to grow a trade network than accepting anyone who pays, but it's the only way pricing protection means anything in practice rather than just on paper.