A company's most valuable strategic asset is its brand. As a guarantee of quality, origin, and performance, a company's brand is often the only basis for consumer decision. The ability to establish, maintain, and enhance a brand is the key to maintaining competitive advantage and long-term profitability in an increasingly crowded and complex global marketplace.

Although the brand is its most valuable asset, it is also the most vulnerable. The Internet is quickly becoming the world's largest sales channel, creating unforeseen challenges for companies in the form of black and grey market activity. Unauthorized sales pose a real and growing threat for companies—since the 1990s, revenues from counterfeiting and piracy have increased more than 400% while revenues from legitimate sales have only increased by 50%. Information Technology (IT) manufacturers, alone, are losing an estimated $40 billion annually in sales. Unmonitored online grey and black market activity can destroy a brand's image, and it is no longer possible to assume that one's distribution chain can correct itself or that litigation is the most direct course.

The evolving complexities of an increasingly global and virtual marketplace demand proactive and comprehensive strategies to maintain brand integrity and Nelson Mullins’ Online Brand Equity and Strategic Distribution Group is one of the few practices in the country with the experience to help clients navigate these challenges. By combining proactive and specifically-tailored plans with rapid responsive action to grey and black market activity, Nelson Mullins has created a comprehensive system to effectively tackle the increasingly complex challenges facing companies today.

Our group of attorneys and professionals combine experience from intellectual property, antitrust, distribution, and litigation departments to provide clients with a one-stop solution to implement strategic plans that:

1. Deter black and grey market sales and evaluate and tailor current distribution strategies to minimize online price erosion;
2. Develop customized strategic plans that support authorized Internet sales and minimize unauthorized Internet sales;
3. Monitor the worldwide online marketplace for distribution anomalies, infringements, and counterfeit products; and
4. Enforce clients’ distribution and intellectual property rights through efficient and effective litigation.

Distribution Architects

Where once a manufacturer could limit retailer competition by spreading the geographic distance between brick-and-mortar retailers, the online sales channel has created fierce competition, forcing retailers to cut prices and eliminate margins. The online retailer is always going to win this "race to the bottom", but online price erosion of a product can adversely affect the manufacturer, its resellers, and the brand itself.

Nelson Mullins' Online Brand Equity and Strategic Distribution Group has extensive experience in designing and implementing Retail Price Maintenance programs to prevent brand erosion and protect reseller margins to prevent destructive distribution channel conflicts. Our team regularly implements Unilateral Resale Price Maintenance strategies to limit price erosion for companies ranging from $10 million to $5 billion in size, and also routinely negotiates national and international distribution agreements to parallel these strategies.

Online Monitoring

Too often manufacturers fail to recognize distribution and counterfeit problems until it is too late. Unmonitored online grey and black market activity can destroy a brand's image, but the breadth and complexity of the online marketplace makes detection an almost impossible task. By using proprietary software developed in-house, Nelson Mullins' Online Brand Equity and Strategic Distribution Group can systematically monitor a growing list of one hundred fifty websites globally in over a dozen languages to effectively identify, tailor plans, and respond rapidly to grey and black market activity as it occurs in real time.

Our software excels at identifying grey and black market activity, but identification is only half of the battle. After identifying the problem, the Nelson Mullins team has created a comprehensive system to tackle and eliminate problems unique to the online marketplace. Nelson Mullins attorneys regularly provide cost-effective and efficient solutions for domestic and international problems that are tailored for our clients’ individual needs.

One-Stop Shopping

While there are other companies offering online monitoring software and law firms working to tighten distribution networks, Nelson Mullins' Online Brand Equity and Strategic Distribution Group is the only firm offering inclusive solutions for online marketplace issues, supported by professionals with extensive knowledge in assisting companies with the sale of their products from introduction to succession. For additional information, please contact our Online Brand Equity and Distribution Group Leader, Christopher Finnerty, at (617) 573-4723 or chris.finnerty@nelsonmullins.com.