Yup that would be one reason, they seem to be trying to build a quality image.
Another is this VERY simplistic example- you have three different retailers called A,B and C.
Each buys $5,000 worth of the same suppliers stock, none of them have any reseller pricing restrictions.
Seller A decides to sell all stock at cost or just above to generate interest in their business etc, and attract customers that might also purchase other brand items that do have profit for them, but they do lose money on the $5,000 purchase (taking into account losses in pay, warehousing, shipping etc overheads in running a business)
Sellers B and C now have little choice but to match or at least come close to seller A’s prices which means they also lose out, if they cannot make up these losses through other sales then it becomes less likely they will want to restock or deal with the suppliers products, knowing they take a gamble that they may not make enough profit to break even.
So us the buyers end up seeing less choice of places to buy, seller B and C might have a great reputation for service, shipping etc, but if they decide not to stock said items then we might only be left with seller A who has the worst reputation for shipping, returns service, especially if they’re only making $1 profit on an item they won’t care about end users as it’s numbers of sales…yada yada yada
So if Nitecore sets MAP’s for example, they are more likely to get their products into more resellers stores as there is some guarantee of resale, which in turn gives us more choice of places to order to receive things like better pre/post sales service, faster shipping and so on.
I don’t see this as ‘price fixing’, it’s simply to ensure a sustainable business model. I would hate to see them go the way of others and let the market gut their products meaning we suffer with possibly cost cutting in manufacturing and left to deal with shoddy resellers.
Wouldn’t stop me personally in the slightest buying another Nitecore product, apart from the faulty charger I got :bigsmile: - though the replacement works beautifully, was resonably priced and appeared (to my eyes) to be of a much higher feature set and quality than the current competition.