Do you eliminate the distributor?
We are a manufacturer without exclusive distributors in geographical areas. We sell our products to whoever wants to buy the products and use them properly.
A few years ago, a distributor, who has bought our products in past, received one of our catalogues for a new product line. They passed the catalogue on to one of their customers for a potential project. That project did not materialize and they purchase another manufacturer's product. Years have gone buy and now that customer who received the catalogue is interested in buying direct from us and wants to eliminate the distributor from the equation.
I don't believe that this "customer" would know about us with the distributor giving him the catalogue. Therefore, my first reaction is to make them go through the distributor to keep things fair.
However, I have had second thoughts for the following reasons:
1) This competitor sells far more of our competitor's products and I am afraid that they might push our competitor's product over ours.
2) I don't want the distributor to mark up our product to the point of losing the sale over price.
What is the right thing to do here for all of the parties involved? Thank you for your replies.
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