from the BRAND side

Benchmark tables answer how much. The only part of a distributor margin you can actually decide is what it buys.Every brand that appoints a partner asks the same question early, usually in the first or second meeting, and almost always in the same form: what margin is normal?It is a reasonable question and it has no answer. Not a contested answer, or a regionally variable answer. No answer, in t..

The storefront, the listing, the price and the ad spend can sit in different hands. Only one of them is expensive to take back.The question arrives in a form that has no good answer: should our distributor run the marketplace store, or should we?Say yes and you hand over the fastest-moving part of the business to someone whose incentives are not identical to yours. Say no and you are running a s..

Most brands negotiate a distribution agreement as if the supply price were the decision. It isn't. Supply price is a single number that both sides model correctly and argue about honestly.The line that actually determines your first two years is the one both sides tend to leave vague: who funds the market, in what proportion, and against what.I have sat on the brand side of that table for a long..

The fourth in a series on appointing and managing distribution partners, written from the brand side of the table.Two markets. The same brand. The same period. The same argument about price.In one, we asked the partner for an increase and the business ended. In the other, the partner asked us for a decrease, we refused, and the business is still running and performing well.Nothing about the nego..

The second in a series on appointing and managing distribution partners, written from the brand side of the table.The request always comes, and it almost always comes early — often in the first serious meeting, before either side has proved anything to the other.We'll need exclusivity.It is a reasonable request. It is also the single term in a distribution agreement that is hardest to reverse, a..