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Legally, resellers must be largely free to set their own resale prices.
Manufacturers and suppliers have only limited ability to influence the price at which their goods are resold by retailers or other intermediaries. This is so irrespective of whether the resales are online or in bricks-and-mortar outlets.
This is because of the so-called “resale price maintenance” (RPM) rules. The European Union and Irish RPM rules can be summarised as follows:
The seriousness of the rules is clear from the fact that on 14 October 2025, the European Commission fined Gucci, Chloé and Loewe over €157m for engaging in illegal RPM.
The Commission decided that the three fashion houses had restricted the ability of third-party retailers to set the prices for products of the three fashion houses.
The fashion houses could decide the prices of products which it sold from its own outlets or websites (even if resold by a wholly-owned group subsidiary) but the fashion houses were limited in what they could do when others resold the products.
The Commission found that the fashion houses monitored resellers’ prices and then “followed up” with those who departed from the prices set by the fashion houses.
The conduct covered the whole of the European Economic Area according to the Commission.
The fines were high, but the Commission said that they had been reduced because the fashion houses had co-operated with the Commission during the investigation. Using the language of bargain basements – ironic in this context, Gucci’s fine was “discounted by 50%” to €119.7m, Loewe also got a “50% reduction” to €18m and Chloé got a “15% reduction” meaning it got fined €19.7m.
The fine in 2025 comes on the back of dawn raid inspections in 2023. Two years from dawn raid to decision was relatively quick but helped by the fact that the three companies cooperated with the Commission in return for reduced fines.
The case is a clear reminder that RPM is still a breach of EU competition law. And while it is seven years since the last major RPM fine – fines totalling €111m were imposed on four electronic manufacturers – it shows that RPM is still a breach of competition law which the Commission is willing to punish.
For more information on EU and national competition dawn raids and inspections, please contact Dr Vincent Power, Partner or any member of A&L Goodbody's EU, Competition & Procurement team.
Date published: 15 October 2025
