I believe it's completely counter productive and a conflict of interest for manufacturers to also conduct retail sales.

Essentially, what they're doing is competing against the very people who are establishing their business and generating the most revenue for their company. As an independent retailer, what is to be your motivation for having to compete against the source of the product.

If you were to search for any given product on the Internet, more times than not, the manufacturer's website will appear before anyone else's. As such, if that manufacturer also makes their product available for retail sales, most consumers will be more inclined to deal directly with that manufacturer as they will have more trust in it being a well established and accessible company.

Another problem is that the independent retailers do all they can to market and promote their business and the products they feature. Accumulatively, retailers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and promotion expenses. As a manufacturer, this is like hiring a huge sales force that pays you for the privilege of selling your product and spends a great deal of money in marketing just to work for you.

The manufacturer would make the most efficient use of their money and efforts by supporting their independent retailers. They can easily do this by supplying them with the most effective PR, marketing and promotions kits. They can spend a fraction of their advertising costs on supplying their retailers with professionally written advertising text copy, professional product photographs and graphics, and dedicated product support.

Let the independent retailers work FOR you, not AGAINST you.


John
www.IndieRetailer.com