The goal of the Marketplace Redistribution Policy (MRP) is to support growth of the retail paintball store. In effect, the VIRTUE family of products will only be sold to or on 3P Marketplaces by VIRTUE. This allows VIRTUE to support retail paintball stores with higher margins on our products.

Marketplace Redistribution Policy (MRP)

For VIRTUE dealers to keep their account in good standing, all VIRTUE products need to be removed from third party marketplaces such as Amazon. by January 2, 2018. Non-current, discontinued VIRTUE products may be sold via eBay. The MRP does not apply to Base or Bunkerkings products.

Any exceptions to this policy (closeout offers, OEM products etc.) require written consent from VIRTUE.

VIRTUE, at its unilateral discretion, will not do business with VIRTUE Dealers who violate the MRP. Virtue reserves the right to make modifications to these policies at any time.

What are some of the reasons why you don’t allow your resellers to utilize third party marketplaces like Amazon?

Most importantly, the new MRP enables VIRTUE to offer even better profit margins to VIRTUE dealers on our products and will strengthen the traditional paintball dealer network.

The primary purposes of a dealer network is to increase awareness and sales of products over multiple sales territories. VIRTUE cooperates with our dealer network by providing quality demanded products with strong margins, and great service to the dealer and end consumer.

However, when 3P marketplaces like Amazon are utilized by resellers, the entire dealer network risks destabilization in the following ways.

• MAP violations occur much more frequently on 3P networks, especially as dealers face pressures to move inventory subjected to storage fees. MAP violations become amplified as multiple resellers in the same 3P channel follow suit.
• Unfair advantage is given to dealers who focus on leveraging the power of 3P marketplaces to sell into other territories, rather than building their own sales channels and growing the sales in their own territory. Dealers who focus on building their stores and websites are creating an asset that will grow paintball through the customers within their reach.
• Fraudulent Warranty claims become impossible to detect with multiple resellers participating in the 3P marketplace.
• Instead of distributing VIRTUE inventory across the country in paintball stores, stocks of VIRTUE products are instead concentrated in a single sales channel. This creates a type of “inventory stuffing” problem where dealers rush to order VIRTUE products to fill their 3P marketplace providers, but once other dealers follow suit, there is a glut of inventory in the sales channel, which frequently leads to MAP violations.
• As VIRTUE products grow in popularity on 3P marketplaces, they invariably attract attention of non-paintball resellers, unauthorized resellers, and even counterfeiters, all of which would be damaging to not only VIRTUE, but every authorized dealer carrying VIRTUE products.
• Product management, such as photos, descriptions, new products,etc. on 3P channels cannot be managed effectively when multiple dealers are modifying listings. Frequently, product listings are inadvertently broken apart with orphaned items created and effectively “lost” as changes are made to various listings.

Please direct any questions on the MRP to customer-retention@virtuepaintball.com.