Getting started 12: MAP notices: what to expect

Chapter 12 of 15 of Getting Started with Trinity, by Brad Bussell, 2AData. Also on the web at www.2adata.com/getting-started.

If you sell any of the roughly 500 brands on the platform with a MAP policy (SIG, Leupold, Trijicon, Holosun and Nightstick among them), you have agreed to their minimum advertised price whether you read the policy or not. The brands enforce it with software that reads gun.deals, GunBroker and your product pages, and with staff who email you.

What a notice looks like

An email from the brand's brand protection team, sometimes a GunBroker message, naming your store, the SKU and UPC, the price they saw and the MAP. Some attach both the policy and the current price list; most attach one or neither, so ask for both in your reply. The policy sets the penalty: typically one business day to correct an online price or two weeks on the Do Not Sell list for a first violation, 30 days for a second, 180 days for a third, permanent after that. On the Do Not Sell list, every distributor stops selling you that brand.

What causes it on a Trinity store

Usually a product with no MAP value on file, or a brand whose MAP rule never matched because a distributor spelled the name differently. A few notices cite the wrong listing altogether. Trinity holds the advertised price at MAP on your site, in your feeds and on GunBroker only when the brand is set to enforce MAP in MAP Pricing Settings and the item is not marked Ignore MAP. A MAP value on file for a brand that is not set to enforce is not a floor, and when the file has no MAP, the item prices like any other. Manufacturers raise MAP on a date, distributor feeds lag, and a rifle advertises at its old number for a few days. It has happened to our own store: one rifle had no MAP on file, the site priced it from the markup, and the brand's team emailed within the week.

What to do

1. Check the listing the notice cites first, since some notices name the wrong item. Then reply the same day either way: that it is corrected, or which listing is really yours and the price it shows. Do that before you argue about anything else.
2. Send us the notice and the price list. We load the manufacturer's current MAP by UPC across your catalog, fix the GunBroker listings, and confirm every item is at or above MAP on the site, in the feeds and on GunBroker. The fix took about an hour.
3. Keep the brand's Price Display Policy set the way the brand wants: open Manufacturers (left menu, under Shipping & FFL; the page is Manufacturer Settings), click Edit on the brand, and pick MAP is Minimum Price, or Email for Price for brands that forbid showing a lower number anywhere.

What the platform does for you

• MAP is applied after your markup on the site, in the feeds, on GunBroker, on eBay and on Walmart. Your feeds send MAP, or an "Email for price" label, as the brand's rule says.
• Offers are turned off on GunBroker for brands that forbid them.
• Sales below MAP are still allowed where the policy allows it: a private emailed quote is not an advertisement. That is how the dealers compete on MAP brands.

Note: Never post your prices on Reddit or social media for MAP brands, and never use "lowest price", "price match" or "make offer" wording on them. Several policies name those words, and the brands read Reddit.

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