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Two of Britain's most popular baby buggy brands have joined the front line in the growing global battle between retailers and eBay, the internet auction site.
Maclaren and Bugaboo, which together supply just over a third of the pushchairs sold in the UK, are trying to stop new pushchairs being sold through eBay shops for a fixed price.
They will be followed by Mamas & Papas, which accounts for another third of the market. It will introduce a strict internet sales policy from September making it almost impossible for independent retailers to sell its products on eBay.
The moves come after a ruling in the French courts this week in which eBay was ordered to pay €19.28 million (£15.24million) to LVMH and €17.3 million to its subsidiary, Christian Dior Couture, for damage to their brands.
EBay is fighting a backlash from manufacturers at the same time as it suffers from a slowdown in the American economy and management upheaval since the departure of Meg Whitman, its chief executive, this year.
The LVMH case centred on the way in which eBay dealt with sales of counterfeit goods. In contrast, moves by some of Britain's most popular manufacturers are being seen as an attempt to prevent independent high street stockists from undercutting prices in the manufacturers' own stores.
One nursery retailer who has a shop in North London said that Mamas & Papas had put stockists who sold through third-party websites on a “no-returns” policy across its entire range since 2005. This effectively made eBay sales unprofitable for the retailer. Now it was telling stockists that third-party websites must meet the company's strict internet trading policy.
“You must obtain our written approval before retailing Mamas & Papas products via the internet following the implementation date. When writing to us seeking approval you must provide us with appropriate proof of compliance,” Mamas & Papas said in a letter sent to its trade stockists last week.
The nursery retailer, who did not want to be named, said: “What they are trying to do is maintain the prices in their own retail outlets ... Five years ago, you had your local market and price competition was local. Now the first thing everyone does is check the price online, so you have to deal nationally to balance that.”
A spokeswoman for Bugaboo confirmed that it would not tolerate its products being sold new on eBay and it would not supply a retailer who intended to sell through fixed-price eBay shops. She said that buying a new Bugaboo product, even in original packaging, from an unofficial stockist would invalidate the warranty.
Maclaren introduced an internet sales policy that banned eBay transactions this year because of concerns that consumers were being ripped off and sold dangerous or counterfeit goods online. A spokeswoman said that removing Maclaren products from eBay became a safety issue after imports were sold in the UK: “These products did not meet the UK standards, so they had to be removed in order to protect consumers,” she said.
EBay said: “We are seeing an increasing and disturbing trend whereby manufacturers and brands either try to ban distributors from selling on particular websites, including on eBay, or on the internet as a whole. Sometimes the prohibitions are explicit. In other cases, manufacturers impose onerous requirements on how their product can be sold, which effectively restricts who can sell them.”
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