In an ongoing battle to stop third party e-retailers from selling products made by luxury brands such as Pandora, Dior and more without consent is finally concluded. It has been confirmed that people who try to do this on platforms like Amazon and Ebay, some of the most popular buy and sell sites, now need a contractual agreement due to a ruling in a top European court yesterday.
The case has been led by the US cosmetics brand Coty, which argued that a German retailer Parfümerie Akzente sold its products on sites against Coty's wishes. The European Court of Justice said online marketplaces detracted from the image of luxury brands. The ruling said luxury brands have no contractual relationship with online marketplaces, which in turn are not required to comply with brands’ quality criteria.
This criteria is imposed on all its authorised distributors, under the terms of their selective distribution agreements.
Legal experts have said online marketplaces will now have to have direct contractual relationships with the luxury brands whose product they want to sell in order to be able to continue to offer them on their platforms.
However, this is good news for luxury department store retailers such as Harrods, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Liberty, as well as luxury brands that have direct-to-consumer sales points as they could see a boost in sales as online marketplace customers would need to revert to these as authorised product distributors.
