selling online

[tim_s]

hi,

i could be starting up an online business soon but i'm not to sure about the legalities in this particular case.

scenario:

if i bought stock of an authorized dealer in bulk and the resold it online, could the manufacturer do anything to stop me? it so happens that the reason none of the authorized dealers sell online is because they're bound by the manufacturers terms & conditions. surely i wouldn't be bound by the manufacturers terms & conditions because i'm not if fact getting the stock directly from them?

any advice would be much appreciated.

[dontlift]

tricky one tim,

i would suggest that you take advice, however surely any blame would lie with the company that sold it to you

[Hates_]

But I would guess that even if you bought it in bulk from a dealer you'd still be getting it at a much higher markup then buying it straight from the manufacturer.

I'm guessing there is nothing wrong with what you are doing and I have no idea what you are planning to sell, but how would your selling effect warrenties etc? If you sell something not as an autorised dealer does that still give your customers the right to a manufactures warranty? Without the dealer stamp etc? I dunno, just my $0.02

[tim_s]

yeah i don't think the authorized dealers are meant to sell stock on to other companies but I know a few that do and it's very tempting to start something up.

i'm getting 100 unique visitors per day at the moment and my keyword positions in google can improve a lot. i estimate i'll be getting about 1000 visitors per day after a lot of optimisation. i'll will definately take advice before seriously persuing this as the company in question is lets just say very big!

thanks for the advice though.

[tim_s]

Hates_ said:

But I would guess that even if you bought it in bulk from a dealer you'd still be getting it at a much higher markup then buying it straight from the manufacturer. I'm guessing there is nothing wrong with what you are doing and I have no idea what you are planning to sell, but how would your selling effect warrenties etc? If you sell something not as an autorised dealer does that still give your customers the right to a manufactures warranty? Without the dealer stamp etc? I dunno, just my $0.02

cheers for the reply. the markup isn't actually that much over the manufacturers price suprisingly - still enough to make a very decent profit. the type of product doesn't really have warranties as such although might have defects in which case I presume I could send it back or swallow the cost.

sorry i can't go into too much detail as the business partner is a bit paranoid!

>> Edited by tim_s on Thursday 18th September 23:37

[rpguk]

I think it depends, if the dealer your buying off is outside of the EU then the case of Tesco and Levis might be of interest.

I think the biggest problem will be finding someone to supply you, their risking their own relationship with the manufacture and could easily get their supply cut, if this was to happen would your business still be viable?

[tim_s]

we've got a few people in the uk & spain that are interested in supplying us but if we couldn't get stock off them for some reason then no, the business would not be viable. thanks for the tesco vs. levi case page i'll have a look at it in more detail.

[Robertuk]

tim_s said:

.... i'm getting 100 unique visitors per day at the moment and my keyword positions in google can improve a lot. i estimate i'll be getting about 1000 visitors per day after a lot of optimisation. i'll will definately take advice before seriously persuing this as the company in question is lets just say very big! thanks for the advice though.

Hi,

*Keywords are no longer as important.*

Google is by far the most important search engine to target. However , due to people abusing the keyword system, google uses a variety of other methods.

Most web developers (and the ....*cowboys*)
think that meta tags are the be all and end all of search engine optimisation.

Most of my sites are in the top ten of google.
But lately things are becoming harder
(as more and more websites appear theres more chance of a competitor having a website).

An important feature is if a high ranking site (say hotmail) links to your site, your site appears much higher up. It is deemed to have valuable content
(hey , hotmail links ot it so it must be good).

Try looking at some keywords of a newish website and cut and pasting them into google and seeing what happens. Chances are it may not appear on the first couple of pages.

I think its a welcome change as it means results are more likely to be *richer* and what you expect.

Older sites may still appear with their keywords,
but if the page changes...the new rules might apply.

(... Have I given away too many secrets ?)

do a search for search engine optimisation on google.

[tim_s]

hi,

thanks for that but...

search engine optimisation is a small part of my job so i've have spent many hours researching it and i just need to wait for google to register the many backlinks that i've got for my positions to improve. all on-page optimisation has been done including interal link text, titles, headings etc and i don't even bother using meta tags as they don't do sh*t.

i have 20 2-word keyphrases all of which rank in the top 15. i'm expecting all of them to be top 5 within two weeks or so . how am i this confident? well i've done lots of work over the past few months of clients site and i regularly look at forum.seochat.com - have a look, its a very good site.



>> Edited by tim_s on Friday 19th September 15:06

[Robertuk]

Hi Tim,

*misread* :-)

" don't even bother using meta tags as they don't do sh*t."

exactly (for google anyway).
I think I may have misread keyphrases for keywords !

The actual maths involved in fine tuning search engine results can be more than A Level maths (but less than rocket science).

Its going to be interesting to see where all this will be in 3 years (As the number of pages increases) .

Best of Luck.

[bobthebench]

For what it's worth, see no problem acting as an unofficial reseller provided goods are sourced within EU, otherwise Tesco case applies.

Warranty is however provided by you in terms of consumer law, not the manufacturer. So customer's goods break/whatever, you are liable to redress things under Sale of Goods Act. Manufacturers will have warranty arrangements through official resellers to underwrite those repairs etc, you won't. As a business you have minimal legal protection, the onus is on you to come to a contractual arrangement with your supplier. If he supplies you with duff goods, the contracts says he will .... If there is no such clause, you face the cost of repair/replacement recoverable from no-one.

[edc]

What about setting up 2 companies? 1 to buy the stock and not sell direct to customers, the 2nd to buy the stock from the 1st company to sell online?

[Piglet]

If you're selling online you need to comply with the terms of the Distance Selling Directive which requires you to give your customers up front info, confirm the order and all sorts of other stuff that I can't remember the detail of!

[rpguk]

Piglet said:

If you're selling online you need to comply with the terms of the Distance Selling Directive which requires you to give your customers up front info, confirm the order and all sorts of other stuff that I can't remember the detail of!

Yeah we got a bit of a bolloking from our local trading standards man because our T&C's wern't quite up to scratch, what a nightmare, made me wonder though because we had put quite a lot of effort into it, while a lot of the sites I see on the web don't even have any Terms or Privacy policy.