Thursday, June 28, 2007

keystone pricing, yarn, and the Supreme Court

I know keystone pricing (basically minimum required pricing for retail sales) was a hot topic here a while ago (at least as far as yarn was concerned) so I thought I'd post a bit about today's U.S. Supreme Court decision on the issue. In a 5-4 decision, the Court overruled a 1911 case that made minimum pricing illegal per se (in non-lawyer speak, that means "absolutely illegal"), and directed all future minimum pricing cases to be decided using the "rule of reason" (lawyer speak for "you can fight about whether it is good for competition and/or public welfare and we'll listen.") If your eyes haven't glazed over yet, you may be wondering what this means for Sexy Knitters. Well, in an nutshell, it means fewer discounted yarns available over the internet, but hopefully more brick and mortar LYSs staying in business. Or, as Justice Breyer wrote in his dissent, "The only safe predictions to make about today's decision are that it will likely raise the price of goods at retail...." Knit on!

2 comments:

mary_me_a_little said...

Well, I guess prices don't have to rise if people refuse to buy things at higher fixed prices. I personally plan to purchase more "house brand" yarns from Webs, Knitpicks, Sarah's and Elann, etc... anyways. Or perhaps rising prices would give me more incentive to bust my stash once and for all, lol

Estellika said...

Good to know, hmmmmm.