A brand notices it in the same order every time. The price on a marketplace listing drifts below what the brand considers its own floor. Then a second seller appears on the listing, then a third, none of them anyone the brand has ever invoiced. Within a few months the product is worth less on the shelf than it is in the price list, and the authorised partners who play by the rules are the ones losing money.
The instinct is to write a minimum-price policy and start enforcing it. In Europe that instinct is not just weak — it is the one move that turns a commercial problem into a legal one. The lever that actually works is upstream: control who gets supplied, and how many hands the goods pass through before they reach a listing.
Why price enforcement is the wrong tool in the EU
Under the EU's vertical block exemption regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/720), imposing a minimum or fixed resale price on a buyer is a hardcore restriction. So is a clause that stops a reseller advertising below a price the supplier sets — the US-style MAP policy, transplanted into Europe, is treated as resale price maintenance. A policy document does not make it safe; enforcing it through rebates, supply cut-offs tied to price, or any other incentive is exactly what makes it enforceable against you rather than for you.
What stays lawful is narrower and, handled well, more useful:
- Recommended and maximum resale prices. Legitimate, as long as no incentive or penalty quietly converts the recommendation into a fixed price.
- Selective distribution. Criteria about who may sell — capability, service standards, channel requirements — rather than about what they charge.
- Choosing whom you supply. A brand is free to decline a reseller for reasons that are not a vehicle for policing prices.
The other half of the misconception is the grey market itself. Once goods have been put on the EEA market with the rights holder's consent, resale within the EEA is generally not unlawful — rights are exhausted. The seller undercutting you is often not a pirate; they are someone who bought genuine stock somewhere and is entitled to resell it. The remedy is contractual and distributional, not a takedown request. None of this is legal advice — for your own contracts and distribution terms, take it from a competition lawyer.
What the marketplaces will and will not do for you
Brands often assume the platforms have a price-policing function hidden somewhere in the brand tooling. They do not.
- Amazon Brand Registry requires a registered or pending trademark and unlocks A+ content, IP reporting and eligibility for programmes such as Transparency and Project Zero. It does not restrict who may list on your ASIN, and it does not control price.
- Project Zero is application-based, with eligibility criteria, and gives self-service counterfeit removal plus automated scanning. Transparency serialises units so that stock without a valid code cannot ship. Both are anti-counterfeit instruments — they do nothing about a legitimate reseller with genuine goods.
- Amazon does not enforce MAP. It treats pricing between a brand and a seller as a private matter.
- bol.com operates an intellectual property infringement policy with a notice-and-takedown route, including a form for brand owners who do not hold a seller account, and can block infringing sellers.
- Allegro runs a Rights Protection Cooperation Programme that puts a rights holder's brand on a protected list so listings are vetted, alongside a general IP reporting channel. On Kaufland, IP complaints go through seller support.
Read that list honestly and the boundary is clear: the platforms give you strong routes against counterfeits and infringing content, and no route at all against a genuine seller charging less than you would like.
The lever that does work: distribution control
Erosion is almost always a supply problem wearing a pricing costume. Every extra hand your stock passes through is another place a pallet can leak into a marketplace at clearance pricing. So the work is upstream and unglamorous:
- Fewer sellers on the same listing. Fewer supplied sellers means fewer new offers on the listing. It does not remove offers that are already there, but it stops the flow that creates new ones — and with one controlled seller presenting the range, price reflects a plan rather than a reflex to whoever moved last.
- Know where the leak is. Unknown offers appearing on your ASIN or EAN are a signal to trace backwards through the distributors and order patterns that could have produced them — not a signal to send letters about price.
- Tighten terms at source. Order controls, channel terms with existing distributors, and a willingness to stop supplying an account that keeps turning up as a marketplace leak.
- Use the IP routes where they genuinely apply. Counterfeit and infringing content, reported through each platform's own channel — and only there.
How this looks when an operator runs the channel
K6 is a European marketplace operator: brands keep full ownership of their brand, send stock, and K6 runs the entire sales operation on Amazon, bol.com, Allegro and Kaufland on commission, with the brand invoicing one Dutch partner. That structure is not primarily a price mechanism — but it changes the shape of the problem, because the brand supplies one party rather than a scattered set of resellers, and that party is the one seller presenting the range on each marketplace. K6 sets the price on its own accounts, in line with the commercial plan — a decision inside one operation, not a price demanded of an independent reseller.
What it cannot do is remove sellers who already hold genuine stock bought elsewhere. Nobody can, lawfully, in the EU. What tightening distribution does is stop the supply that feeds them, and give the listing a single, deliberate price while the existing stock works its way out of the market. That takes time, and any partner promising a clean listing within weeks is promising something no lawful lever can guarantee.
If you are weighing who should hold the account in the first place, the operator-versus-agency comparison sets out where the risk sits, and the three-route breakdown adds the distributor option — the route that most often creates the leaks described here. For the platform where the erosion usually shows up first, see how K6 runs Amazon.
The one question worth answering first
Before any of this: where did the stock those sellers are listing actually come from? Almost every case resolves into an answer someone in the business already knows — an over-ordering distributor, a closed export deal, a clearance lot. Until that is on the table, price enforcement is aimed at the symptom and, in Europe, aimed at the wrong target legally as well.
If you want a straight read on your own range — who is on your listings, what the distribution picture looks like, and what can realistically be tightened — the Brand Review gives you that free, in writing, within five working days. If you would rather just ask, contact us and you get a reply within one working day.