Supplier-Customer Relations
The relationship between industry and trade is central to distribution: trade provides industry with its markets and needs to secure its supplies and their conditions to guarantee its sales and margins.
It is central to ongoing legislative developments aimed at improving consumer purchasing power: anti-competitive practices and administrative controls on contracts concluded between suppliers and buyers govern contractual freedom, and impose severe financial penalties on operators.
The problems
Contracts guarantee the implementation of your commercial policy and secure your margins. Compliance with competition law is key to protecting buyers and sellers from administrative and legal penalties. Compliance with competition law is key to protecting buyers and sellers from administrative and legal penalties. Finally, sales-related disputes, such as the abrupt termination of established business relationships, require the assistance of experienced teams. Gouache supports you with all issues related to your B2B sales and purchases.
- General terms and conditions of sale and purchase: Gouache will translate your commercial policy into your General Terms and Conditions of Sale, the basis of commercial negotiation from which discussions are initiated, and will secure your sales, just as our teams assist buyers in defining the purchase agreements communicated to sellers to negotiate their General Terms and Conditions of Sale.
- Referencing agreements, unique agreements: Gouache provides drafting and assistance in formalizing commercial negotiations to ensure that the outcome is formalized in compliance with the law to ensure the security of the seller and the buyer.
- Compliance (competition/restrictive practices / invoices / payment terms): Gouache conducts audits and helps you ensure compliance of your business practices, pricing practices, invoices and payment terms by implementing internal procedures and programs to comply with competition law and restrictive practices.
- Purchasing and referencing groups : pooling resources is essential to increase purchasing power and leverage in negotiations to maximize margins. Gouache has acquired significant experience in setting up these purchasing and referencing groups, from assisting with the strategic choice of grouping structures to drafting the necessary documents for their implementation.
- Assistance during audits and disputes with administrative authorities responsible for competition control : from the initial audit to its conclusion, Gouache lawyers’ in-depth knowledge of the procedure, the DGCCRF (French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control), and the relevant competition rules enables them to manage this crucial phase of the audit’s outcome and any subsequent litigation.
- Abrupt termination of established business relationships : Gouache allows you to anticipate and prepare for the end of a business relationship as well as to manage the one that is suffered in the best interests in order to avoid or obtain damages related to the abrupt termination of the business relationship.
Customer/supplier disputes : related to non-performance, and in particular non-payment, litigation solutions are deployed according to your objectives and the issues at stake.
The Gouache Avocats approach
We leverage our experience and embrace specialization as a guarantee of our reliability. Effectively organizing distribution and the entire resulting marketing chain constitutes a distinct legal and judicial expertise.
Our experience in this field has given us credibility in shaping the doctrine and sharing our expertise with our colleagues and the most prestigious universities. Publications and scientific collaborations, teaching, and official rankings establish us as a key player in these issues.
Our experienced teams are rigorously selected for the relevance of their skills and their mastery of legal techniques specific to the field challenges of distribution.
They strive for excellence through demanding organization, structured processes and perfectly honed methodologies.
We put these qualities at the service of your objectives, defined in agreement with you in a pragmatic way, and we mobilize to achieve them.
Our solutions for your customer-supplier relationships
Supplier-Customer Relations
Central purchasing and referencing
The tailor-made organisation of your bundled supply.
Supplier-Customer Relations
Your BtoB general terms and conditions of sale and supplier contracts
Disseminate your commercial policy and ensure your compliance
Supplier-Customer Relations
B2B Sales Litigation
Manage the end of a business relationship: avoid damages due to a sudden termination of established business relations if you are a customer, assert your rights if you are a supplier.
Supplier-Customer Relations
Ensure your compliance: competition, restrictive practices, invoicing, payment terms
Avoid name & shame and dissuasive fines!
