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Asiatic London manufactures premium rugs sold through major UK retailers — Next, Marks & Spencer, Argos, Wayfair, and dozens of specialist rug shops. Their business model depends on healthy retailer relationships.
Then the complaints started.
"Your other retailers are undercutting us." Next raised it first. Then Marks & Spencer did too. The message was the same: smaller online retailers were selling Asiatic rugs well below the recommended retail price, and it was hurting their margins.
Before working with us, Asiatic wasn't systematically monitoring retailer prices. When Next complained about undercutting, Asiatic's technology head would manually check a few sites. But with thousands of SKUs across dozens of retailers, each with multiple size and color variations, manual checking was impossible at scale.
Asiatic evaluated several price monitoring platforms before finding us. The problem: rugs aren't simple products.
A single rug design might come in 2 color variations and 4 size variations — that's 8 SKUs for one design. Multiply across their catalog, and you're tracking thousands of variations.
We built a matching system designed for Asiatic's variation-heavy catalog.
Without reliable matching, you can't compare prices. Without comparison, you can't prove violations. The matching capability is what makes enforcement possible.
Three times per week, Asiatic receives a consolidated report covering all in-scope products across 8 retailers.
Master fields (from Asiatic):
Per retailer (for each matched variation):
| Field | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Page URL | Direct evidence link for enforcement |
| Size / Color | Ensures the exact variation is compared |
| Retailer Product Title | Confirms what the retailer is selling |
| Current Price | Violations now |
| Previous Price | Shows whether the violation is new or recurring |
| % Below RRP | Severity ranking |
This lets Asiatic rank violators by frequency and severity — and see whether enforcement changes behavior.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Unique SKUs (in-scope) | 4,729 |
| Retailers monitored | 8 |
| Size variations (tracked) | 68 |
| Collection frequency | 3× per week |
The retailers span major department stores (Next, M&S, Argos, Very) and specialist rug sites (RugShop, BM, LandOfRugs, RugsDirect). Each has different site structures, different product naming conventions, and different anti-bot protections.
Once Asiatic had reliable, matched data across retailers, patterns emerged they'd only suspected before.
| Retailer | Violation Rate | Avg Below RRP | Cheapest % |
|---|---|---|---|
| BM | 100% | 75.5% below | 91.1% |
| RugShop | 99.3% | 58.1% below | 1.7% |
| Next | 99.9% | 24.8% below | 0.4% |
| LandOfRugs | 87.0% | 34.2% below | 4.5% |
In the tracked dataset, BM was pricing below RRP on every product in scope — and was the cheapest retailer 91% of the time when the same product appeared at multiple sites. This turns retailer complaints into a ranked list of chronic violators — by rate, severity, and frequency.
The price gaps were substantial:
| Product | BM Price | Next Price | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forma 200x290 Green | £644.76 | £1,157 | £512 (79%) |
| Gatsby 240x340 Autumn | £890.66 | £1,383 | £492 (55%) |
| Tate 200x290 Charcoal | £478.80 | £911 | £432 (90%) |
This is the evidence you can forward to a major retailer without debate: same rug, same size/color, different price.
Armed with concrete evidence, Asiatic moved from reactive complaints to proactive enforcement.
The workflow now:
The results:
Asiatic has been a customer for four years. They started with 200 SKUs to test whether the matching would work for their catalog complexity. It did.
The customer gathered documented evidence of systematic violations, sent notices to chronic violators, and for those who didn't stop — discontinued supply.
That's the difference between suspecting a problem and solving it.
Asiatic's story resonates with manufacturers and brands facing similar challenges: