The Santa & Cole story
Santa & Cole has been creating lighting and furniture in Barcelona since 1985. Their modern, urban designs are versatile and add style to homes and workplaces. Since the company was founded, more than eighty creators have contributed to a rich catalog of furniture and lighting products with a constant focus on quality and details. Their mission is to build, safeguard and disseminate knowledge through design objects, whose quality is recognizable at the touch of a hand. As the company and brand grew in popularity, so did their global partner network.
With the rapid evolution of the online world, it became very challenging for Santa & Cole to control their distributors’ prices globally. Ecommerce has made the already competitive market even more cutthroat, enticing customers away from the high street. When Santa & Cole first entered the online space, ecommerce used to be a fairly simple game. Setting pricing agreements with partners required little to no work.
However, over the past years, this has changed drastically. The online world has made it easier for consumers to compare prices and look for the best deals. In today’s competitive ecommerce space, having one seller drop their price can mean undercutting the entire network. Unless prices are being regulated, brands can start competing within their own partner’s network. Price erosion and loss in profit margins are only some of the consequences. This can also have a long-lasting negative impact on consumers’ perception of a brand.
Investing time in tasks that matter
Managing a global network of partners is a time-consuming task. Though some retailers may choose to put a Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) policy in place, many times it might not be followed by distributors.
Prior to hiring Red Points, Santa & Cole was handling this task manually, spending countless hours following up with non-compliant distributors. Red Points’ Seller Tracking platform provides Santa & Cole visibility over its partner’s online activities. As part of the platform, Santa & Cole has now access to notification templates that can be sent out to its distributors to notify them when pricing agreements aren’t being followed. As a result, Santa & Cole have both been able to create a conflict-free partner network, and the time saved in doing so has been invested into more strategic tasks.
Better distributor relationships
Carefully choosing a network of distributors and setting consistent pricing agreement guidelines is key. For Santa & Cole, it was critical to work with global partners who would uphold the integrity of the brand and not diminish the value by setting lower prices.
Even though there are set agreements in place, pricing policies can only protect a price if there is some level of enforcement to keep the different stakeholders accountable. With Red Points’ Seller Tracking solution, Santa & Cole now receives alerts when distributors do not respect their pricing policy. In turn, Santa & Cole can quickly send notifications to those not complying. With the combination of a solid pricing policy and good enforcement, it is now possible to fight price erosion and create long-lasting relationships with distributors.
