Marc Schillaci - Oxatis Founder and CEO

Brick-and-mortar shops mandatory for pure players? (final episode, season 1)

Season 1 of the series "Luxury, E-Commerce and Bricks" ends with a (temporary?) victory for the luxury goods industry (see previous episodes here and here).

There's nothing new under the sun. The European Commission, who seemed to want to overhaul the text concerning selective distribution regulations, finally decided to give up on the revamp and settled for small changes, keeping in line with the previous regulations!

The basic principle, which was making waves, remains unchanged concerning online sales: Manufacturers can require that their distributors have one or several bricks and mortar stores. 

"It's a balanced text that protects consumer interests and allows us to develop our industry on the Internet," says Elisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, Delegate General of the Comité Colbert, an influential French economic committee.

Yes, it would be hard to imagine the members of the Comité Colbert overjoyed to see their products sold on PriceMinister or eBay! 

Because at the Comité Colbert, everything is luxury, calm and voluptuousness?

And as any medal comes with its share of concessions, merchant sites did get some "guarantees" relating to markets closed to traditional and online price-discounters, among other things. With these guarantees, "once authorized, distributors must be free to sell on their own websites as well as in shops or other physical outlets". So, is all the pressure off concerning prices and quantities sold once the precious right to sell the brand/product is granted?

Against all expectations, eBay said that the decision "reflects the realities of the 21st century by placing online and offline sales on an equal footing".

Now things are a bit clearer, but not necessarily on a global scale for certain more widely distributed brands and products. Unless this hit pilot series is picked up for a second season called "Breaking down the brick wall"?

Illustration via

QoS? What's that?

Do you have a subject concerning e-commerce or the web that you want to share? Come and co-blog it here!

This post was written by Hervé Bourdon, VP Marketing and Communications at Oxatis.

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These last few hours, I've seen some discussions on twitter concerning the public availability and history of the QoS.

Apparently, not a lot of companies give out this information.

So, what is QoS?

Alright, I'll give you a hint. QoS...as in Quality of Service. 

In pretentious, professional jargon, the definition reads like this:

"In the field of computer networking...the term quality of service (QoS) refers to resource reservation control mechanisms. Quality of service is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow...

QoS is sometimes used as a quality measure, with many alternative definitions, rather than referring to the ability to reserve resources. Quality of service sometimes refers to the level of quality of service, i.e. the guaranteed service quality."

In laymen's terms, Quality of Service is an indicator / control tool that measures online service availability, by date and time, for Oxatis shops and back-offices.

For this QoS report, Oxatis uses a third party provider, Keynote Red Alert, to test the accessibility of its system every five minutes at several strategic access points. That represents nearly a thousand tests a day!

This service is considered as the worldwide leader in Internet performance services and accessibility monitoring. Oxatis' objective is to provide users with over 99% service availability.

In reality, our certified accessibility rating over the last 12 months is 99.982%!

And you can consult the Oxatis Quality of Service Report whenever you feel like it. We've got nothing to hide!

Questions? :-)

Vroom Vroom: Precision Mechanics

Do you have a subject concerning e-commerce or the web that you want to share? Come and co-blog it here!

This post was written by Marc Heurtaut, Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of Oxatis. 

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As those of you that follow me on twitter already know: I got to Los Angeles on Wednesday to gear up for the great battle of the Oxatis server migration!

If you don't know by now, I have a huge passion for cars. So, let's say that after a perfect migration, everything is in working order and we now have a kind of super 450HP, '65 V8 Ford Mustang engine under the hood!

And for those of you that love details and mechanics, we even threw a Hyper-V cluster into the mix! Vroom vroom!

E-Commerce and Selective Distribution, Industry Up In Arms

This week, Amazon EU, eBay France, Price Minister, Pixmania, RueDuCommerce and 3 Suisses International wrote a collective letter to Joaquin Almunia, European Competition Commissioner, to draw his attention to the proposed modifications that are currently under discussion.

This letter comes after an event I mentioned (remember?) following a measure that would allow manufacturers to require their retailers to have a physical, bricks and mortar store or show-room before being able to sell their products online. 

Based on the Commission's project, they criticize certain manufacturers of everyday items that were not designed to be governed by selective distribution rules (toys, electronics, household appliances, etc.). These manufacturers quote the EU's distribution regulations as arguments for challenging the sale of these products on the Internet and thus keeping prices high.

The authors of the letter express this opinion clearly, "We believe that the main reason for doing this is to restrict the availability of such products through E-Commerce and, by doing so, maintain high prices to the detriment of the end consumer."

As previously mentioned, Brussels is working on modifying the ten year old rules, in force until the end of May 2010, which govern the vertical agreements between suppliers and distributors.

Stay tuned for further developments!