COMPETITION • EUROPEAN AND FRENCH LAW • RESTRICTIVE AGREEMENTS
The expression “pure players” refers to operators who carry out all or most of their sales on the Internet, as opposed to “brick & mortar” operators, traditional merchants who carry out their activity exclusively in a physical shop, and “click & mortar” operators, traditional merchants who have developed a complementary online activity. An exclusively online presence allows pure players to make certain cost savings compared to physical distribution and therefore to offer more advantageous prices to customers.
Point 52 of the Vertical Restraints Guidelines, which prohibits passive sales resulting from clauses prohibiting online sales, allows suppliers, by way of derogation, to require their distributors to sell at least a certain absolute quantity (in value or number) of the products offline, to ensure the efficient operation of their physical point of sale. This absolute quantity of offline sales may be the same for all buyers, or may be set individually for each buyer, based on objective criteria, such as the size of the buyer in the network or its geographical location.
