Your Supplier Cannot Set the Price on Your Own Website

The price on your own website is yours to set. Not your supplier's, not the brand manager who rings you about it, and not the distributor who emails a "pricing policy" around every January.

That sounds obvious written down. It is also ignored, quietly and routinely, in a fair number of Irish trade relationships. A supplier spots that your online price is under everyone else's. An email arrives. By the following morning the number on your product page has gone back up. Nobody signed anything. Nobody used the words price fixing. It just happened, the way it has happened for years.

The part that should stop you is this. In Ireland that arrangement is almost certainly illegal, and the supplier is not the only one exposed. You are.

What suppliers actually do

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission publishes a plain list of what resale price maintenance looks like in practice, and it is worth reading against your own supplier agreements. It covers setting a minimum retail price or a specific price point, requiring a minimum margin, granting rebates or bonuses on condition that you sell at a specified price, restricting how far you can discount, and, the one that matters most here, preventing or limiting a reseller's ability to advertise lower prices online ^[1].

That last item is not an afterthought. Your website is where the price becomes visible to everyone, including every other stockist carrying the same brand. It is the shop window that the supplier can see from their desk.

Consider a typical case. An independent bike shop in Mayo carries a well-known frame brand alongside its own workshop business. It clears last season's stock online at a genuine discount, because it has already paid for that stock and needs the space before winter. A message comes back from the area rep: the online price is off-brand, take it down by Friday or the account goes on hold. The stock is in the back room. The bills are already paid. Most owners in that position put the price back up and say nothing, and that is precisely what the practice relies on.

Going along with it does not protect you

Retailers assume this is the supplier's problem. It is not only the supplier's problem.

The CCPC is explicit on the point: even if you agree to resale price maintenance reluctantly, or as a result of threats, you may still be in breach of the law ^[1]. Competition law in Ireland catches the agreement, and an agreement has two sides. Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002, as amended, is what prohibits it.

The consequences are not small. Under the Competition (Amendment) Act 2022, the CCPC can pursue administrative financial sanctions of up to 10 million euro or 10 per cent of worldwide turnover, whichever is greater, although any such fine has to be confirmed by the High Court before it takes effect. For a manufacturer, that is a bad quarter. For a small stockist dragged into the same arrangement, the legal costs alone would be the story of the year.

I will admit where I got this wrong myself. Early on, a retailer described this exact situation to me and I told him the supply relationship was worth more than a few euro of margin, so let it go. I was giving commercial advice about a legal problem. I would answer that differently now.

This is not a historical issue

If you think enforcement here is theoretical, the file is open as you read this.

In January 2026 the CCPC confirmed it is investigating a suspected resale price maintenance arrangement in the small electric appliances sector, involving a manufacturer, a distributor and multiple retailers operating in Ireland ^[2]. It carried out an unannounced inspection at an Irish distributor in June 2025. In November 2025, the German competition authority inspected the manufacturer's premises in Germany with a CCPC officer present. The CCPC has also issued formal information requests to several Irish retailers.

Read that last sentence again. Retailers.

There is form for it too. The CCPC investigated the distributor of FitFlop footwear over minimum prices imposed on retailers and enforced partly by monitoring their websites, and secured commitments that were made an order of the High Court ^[5]. A furniture supplier, Coach House, gave commitments in 2021 to stop enforcing its suggested selling prices on resellers, and the High Court made those an order binding for seven years ^[3]. Neither of those was a household name. Neither needed to be.

Why it lands on your website first

Online prices are simply easier to police than shop-floor ones, and that is exactly what the biggest case in this area turned on.

In July 2018 the European Commission fined four consumer electronics manufacturers, Asus, Denon and Marantz, Philips and Pioneer, a total of over 111 million euro for fixing online resale prices ^[4]. The Commission found the manufacturers intervened particularly with online retailers who offered products at low prices, and that retailers who did not follow the requested prices faced threats or sanctions such as blocking of supplies. Sophisticated monitoring tools let them track resale prices across the network and step in quickly when a price dropped.

Margrethe Vestager, then the Commissioner for competition, put the effect on shoppers bluntly: as a result of the actions taken by these four companies, millions of European consumers faced higher prices for kitchen appliances, hair dryers, notebook computers, headphones and many other products.

There is a detail in that decision that deserves more attention from smaller retailers than it gets. Many large online sellers use pricing algorithms that automatically track competitors. So when a supplier leans on the cheapest seller in the market, the correction ripples outward and lifts everyone else's price too. One phone call to one stockist moves the whole market. That is not a side effect. That is the point of doing it.

What a supplier is genuinely allowed to do

This is where the honest line sits, and it matters, because not every pricing conversation with a supplier is unlawful.

A recommended retail price is lawful. So is a maximum price. The condition, per the CCPC guidance, is that an RRP has to be clearly marked as a recommendation and you have to remain genuinely free to set your own price ^[1]. A price list with "RRP" in the column heading is fine. A price list with "RRP" in the column heading plus a rep who checks your website every Tuesday and rings when you go under it is not a recommendation at all. It is a minimum price with better manners.

There is also a real exception. If you are a genuine agent rather than a reseller, meaning the supplier owns the goods, carries the commercial risk and you are paid a commission for selling on their behalf, then the supplier setting the price is part of the arrangement and competition law treats it differently. Franchise and concession agreements can get close to this line without crossing it. If your contract sits anywhere near that territory, that is a conversation for a solicitor and not for a blog post, mine included.

And one limitation worth naming, because nobody else will. None of this obliges a supplier to keep selling to you. A supplier is generally entitled to choose who it deals with, and a business that reports a customer's supplier can find the commercial relationship gets colder regardless of who was right. The CCPC does accept information in confidence, which is the practical protection available to you, but it is an honest limitation of the remedy rather than a guarantee about the relationship.

If that email lands in your inbox

1. Keep the message. Save the email, the WhatsApp, the note of the phone call, with the date. Verbal pressure is still an agreement in law, but it is much harder to describe six months later.
2. Do not reply agreeing to a minimum price. Written confirmation from you turns an implied arrangement into a documented one, and you are a party to it.
3. Check what your contract actually says. Suggested pricing, minimum advertised price clauses, rebates tied to price points. Get a competition law read on it before your next renewal, not after.
4. Talk to the CCPC. The Commission actively asks retailers to come forward where a supplier has tried to impose a minimum price, and it takes information at antitrust@ccpc.ie.

The one channel where nobody else holds the switch

Every route to market comes with somebody else's rules attached. Sell through a marketplace or a classified listing and the platform sets the fees, the layout and the terms, which is the real cost of trading through somebody else's listings. Sell branded goods and the supplier has a view on your pricing, whether or not that view is lawful. Your own website is the one place where the number on the page is a decision you make, and pricing law aside, the rules about how you announce a reduction are yours to comply with directly rather than negotiate with a third party.

Which is why it is worth being able to act on that decision in the moment. Plenty of business owners cannot change a price on their own site without emailing an agency and waiting, at somewhere between 75 and 150 euro an hour for the privilege. Clearing autumn stock becomes a two-day job. Matching a competitor becomes not worth the hassle. The control you are legally entitled to turns out to be theoretical, not because a supplier took it, but because the site was built so that somebody else had to touch it.

A site you can log into and edit yourself removes that. Web60 builds a full WordPress site from a description of your business in under a minute and hands you the keys, with hosting, SSL, backups and support included for 60 euro a year and no hourly rate for changing your own prices. You own the site, you own the content, and you set the number on the page.

Conclusion

Most of the pressure in this area works because it never gets written down and never gets challenged. A rep makes a call, an owner does the sums on the supply relationship, the price goes back up, and everybody carries on. The practice survives on the assumption that no small retailer will ever ask whether it is legal.

It is worth asking. The answer, in Ireland, is that a supplier setting your minimum price is prohibited, that agreeing under pressure does not put you in the clear, and that the CCPC has an open investigation right now in which the retailers, not just the manufacturer, are being asked questions.

Your product page is your commercial decision. Next time an email arrives telling you otherwise, at least you will know what you are looking at.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a supplier tell me what price to sell at in Ireland?

A supplier cannot require you to sell at or above a price it sets. The CCPC describes resale price maintenance as an agreement between a supplier and a reseller that prevents the reseller from setting its own prices, and it is prohibited under section 4 of the Competition Act 2002, as amended. That covers minimum prices, fixed price points, minimum margin requirements, limits on how far you can discount, and rebates or bonuses granted on condition that you hold a particular price.

Is a recommended retail price legal?

Yes, provided it is genuinely a recommendation. The CCPC's position is that recommended retail prices and maximum prices are lawful where they are clearly marked as recommendations and the reseller remains genuinely free to set its own price. Where the supplier monitors compliance and applies pressure, incentives or sanctions to make the recommendation stick, it stops being an RRP and becomes resale price maintenance.

What if I only agreed because the supplier threatened to cut off supply?

It does not put you in the clear. The CCPC states that even if you agree to resale price maintenance reluctantly, or as a result of threats, you may still be in breach of the law, because competition law catches the agreement and an agreement has two parties. The practical response is to document the pressure, avoid confirming a minimum price in writing, and contact the CCPC rather than quietly complying.

Can a supplier stop me advertising a lower price online?

Preventing or limiting a reseller's ability to advertise lower prices online is on the CCPC's own list of what resale price maintenance looks like. Restrictions on online selling are also treated seriously under EU vertical agreement rules, and the European Commission's 2018 decisions against four electronics manufacturers concerned exactly this conduct. If your supplier agreement contains a minimum advertised price clause or restricts your online channel, get a competition law opinion on it.

Who do I report resale price maintenance to in Ireland?

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. It has publicly encouraged retailers to come forward where a supplier has tried to impose a minimum price, and its competition enforcement team can be reached at antitrust@ccpc.ie. Complaints can be made in confidence, which matters where you still depend on the supplier for stock.

Sources