As I understand, it is illegal under European law to grant a contract to a distributor that is exclusive. That's because free trade within the EU states is a basic tenant of the EU concept, as is freedom of people to work and live in other EU countries (in some cases it is necessary to prove that you can financially support yourself beyond the first three months).
So, when distributors talk about exclusive contracts this tends to mean that only they are allowed to buy direct from the manufacturer, in their country. As far as I know there is no way to stop that distributor selling to other EU countries, or for other companies to source the products from somewhere else (so called grey-importing) and sell in your home country.
Now there is a view held by some people, that grey importers are parasites who feed off the reputation created by the master distributor. They didn't make the investment in marketing, advertising or education, and simply import and sell into a market that they did nothing to create.
For sure, if you want to buy products from a company that really knows their products well, can give support and advice, and has the backup from the manufacturer, then you buy from the master distributor. You may also do that if you care about the industry and believe that strong master distributors contribute to the nail industry as a whole.
On the other hand, you may not give a toss and just want to save a few bucks. That is who these grey importers appeal to.
However, before you buy from these grey importers, you might want to ask them if they have registered their company on the European Cosmetic Products Notification Portal. If so, they will be able to give you a CPNP organisation number for their company. All cosmetic manufacturers and distributors who sell cosmetic products must register by law or face financial penalty, or potentially imprisonment.
The CPNP is important because that is where the Doctors find information in the event of someone reporting ill heath due to product use - so it's in all of our interests to make sure that our suppliers are registered.
Many smaller distributors and jack the lad type of online shops, are not registered with CPNP and I will tell you why. To do this they also have to upload :
- a photograph of every product
- a photograph of every product label
- the Material Data Safety sheet
Many products imported from the USA have labels that do not meet the specifications required by EU cosmetic law because in the USA they require much less information on the labels. So to comply with EU law, the importer has to design and print a new label for every product - and that is expensive. Many don't want that expense and to avoid detection by the authorities, don't register with CPNP - if they even know about CPNP or the EU labelling law in the first place.