La European Commission decided to investigate the pricing practices applied by the high fashion industry, especially in the case of leather goods or accessories distributed by multi-brand stores and retailers, as The Fashion Law reveals.
From extensive controls to irregular supplies, the European Union intends deepen the habits and behaviors of companies against wholesalers: among the most common transgressions, for example, there are theconsumer price setting (very different from those assigned by the brand for direct sales), and in general restrictive commercial practices, harmful to market competition.
Specifically these strategies of manipulation and economic control aim at keep the cheapest price on the brand's original platform and raise it instead on the retailer's website; in this way the consumer will turn more often and willingly to the original company, rather than to a wholesaler.
In the past the European Commission has already acted legally against Guess, which in 2018 received a fine of 40 million euros of the antitrust for having tried to manipulate the prices of its dealers.
Regarding this event, the authorities said: “the reference price against which discounts were applied it was not the price actually charged by Yoox, but an amount representative of the presumed market price charged in the fashion houses' shops. In this way, offer conditions (reference price and discounts) were envisaged that were more advantageous than those actually ever practised”.
