Take this with a grain of salt as I am not a business major and know very little if anything about the legality of price fixing, and or what would qualify as price fixing.
I only have two words to say about this, Rocky Patel. He not only let the competition flourish, he encouraged it. Now most people here I think will agree that his cigars have suffered in quality over the years and many, including myself, will agree that at least on the vintage line he has tweaked his blends for the worse. Now anyone who knows anything about internet sales knows that you can find OWR for about half of MSRP or less online. So tell me, why would you pay anything close to MSRP at a B&M for the same cigar? A few dollars is one thing but I personally would feel like I was throwing my money down the toilet if I did this. Even if I did really have a craving for one, enough so to pay over MSRP including taxes, I would never buy more than one. This seems to have drastically hurt his business long term. I know that personally I only have a few of his blends that I still enjoy and even then I would
never pay MSRP for them.
If closing out this account and trying to get retailers to sell close to MSRP will keep oliva producing high quality delicious cigars than I feel like I can't complain too much. On top of that, Oliva cigars are well known and well liked because they are consistently good and very reasonably priced. As far as price fixing goes, they are trying to protect their business model long term. May not be something that I would necessarily do but IMHO they do have the right to do what they please with their company.
p.s. thanks for reading my probably unnecessarily long post
