Businesses are continually looking at ways of expanding into new territories or providing new products. Distributorship and agency agreements, whilst different, both offer potential routes to new markets (without excessive establishment costs). We regularly advise retail, wholesale and manufacturing clients on the pros and cons of these forms of agreement and the issues associated with agency and distributorship agreements, particularly problems in relation to title, product liability and contract termination. In addition, specific legal issues associated with competition law restrictions and the Commercial Agents’ Regulations may also need to be addressed.
These agreements are not risk-free, but we believe that we can assist our clients, through appropriately drafted contracts and other measures, in understanding and minimising the financial, commercial and legal risks (and thereby facilitating meeting our clients’ strategic aims and objectives).