http://keystoneyarns.blogspot.com/

I’m not interested in falsely accusing people, so I’m asking that if people have written evidence of keystone pricing practices, such as sales agreements stipulating certain prices, that they e-mail them to me so I can post them to the blog.

I’m open to other input on this as well. Thanks!

Susan

There’s logic to carving up by territory: by promising distributors an exclusive market, the distributorship is more attractive and allows the distributor to concentrate on developing the market, leading to what ought to be the most efficient and/or widespread coverage of that market and maximum availability of the product to the consumer, right? The connection between the benefit to the consumer (available product) and the creation of an exclusive territory is a lot clearer to me than however the consumer allegedly benefits by fixing a mandatory minimum retail price. The logic from the “anonymous” comment was that other retailers would drop the product line if undercut… but those other retailers were in the same geographical region, so the threat of lack of availability to the American market doesn’t really have as much force.

There may be some legal way to maintain a certain minimum price, but the one guaranteed legal way to do is to distribute it yourself…

Re Babies: all I’ve found, so far, is a case involving Toys ‘R’ Us entering into some kind of vertical restraining deal with suppliers — preventing them from supplying discount club chains, or something like that. Deliberately undercutting a competitor’s price (and taking a loss to do so) in order to hurt the competitor may constitute predatory pricing, which I don’t think was the issue in the TRU case I found.

On another note, as I was googling about I found a 2005 report on the commencement of an antitrust suit by AMD against Intel. Intel was alleged to have bullied PC vendors to keep them from using AMD chips. I’m only linking to it because I wanted to quote this:

The complaint is vivid and explicit in its detailed recounting of how Intel allegedly treated its partners. For example, Intel allegedly threatened Dell with “retribution” if the company dealt with AMD; demanded that Hewlett-Packard fire a high-ranking executive for negotiating a deal to use AMD’s Athlon64 in its commercial computer line; and “beat [Gateway] into guacamole in retaliation” for dealing with AMD.

Mmm… guacamole.

as for the pricing, well I charge basically what they tell me. If I get the yarn at a good deal (say at a good exchange rate) I try to pass that on to my customers. Since I’ve opened I’ve seen stores start undercutting me, while other stores charge double what I do. I’ve even had yarn dyers try to cut me off from certain distributors because we we’re using the same yarn. Wasn’t there some legal case with Babies’rUs or Baby Depot undercutting all their competition so they would go out of business?

To make a long story short, knitting is highly political.

So, I went home an ordered some of the new circulars off Knitpicks. For $5. I used to feel guilty shopping at knitpicks, but I’m over it.

There are shops that do a good job of ordering yarn creatively, rather than blindly stocking all the name brands. Yarn Barn in Lawrence gets bulk natural yarns from some supplier (I’m guessing on the internet) and they’re affordable, and absolutely wonderful to work with. The alpaca I bought was the softest thing in the store– and probably the cheapest per yard, because it didn’t come with all the marketing BS.

Ok, done with my rant.

As for Sarah/Tilli…Sarah respects her customers. Tilli apparently does not. It’s an easy choice for me.