“We started as e-commerce sellers, not a software company,” admits MAP Services Founder David Portugal. “We began selling online in the early 90’s, well before any minimum advertised price monitoring policies existed. We grew our business to do over a half million in sales every month. Life was good…”
Somewhere around 2003 manufacturers came to us with their MAP pricing policies. “We were happy to comply. We were the good guys after all, with a full-time customer service department. We hoped this would lead to greater margins. After all, it is no fun trying to make a living with 1% margins!”
Portugal soon noticed a problem. “We discovered that our sales stopped for all clients with MAP policies. Here we were expecting greater margins, but instead, we got the exact opposite. We contacted the manufacturers and told them to please police their MAP violators because good guys like us were losing sales to the shady site operators who were sitting around in their underwear, offering no pre- or post-sales support.”
One day in a fit of anger and frustration, Portugal wrote some software to find all the MAP violators out there. He sent the lists to the manufacturers to show them the problem — The manufacturers were very surprised because they had not known a lot of the violators. They soon started asking for additional copies of reports to help them… This soon grew into a side business and the features and capabilities grew and grew.”
Fast forward to today as MAP Services Corp. adds 13 new brands this quarter alone, including a couple powersports brands like Boat Bling and BBR Motorsports. "Leveraging advanced artificial intelligence, our technology not only identifies instances of non-compliance but also uncovers sellers adhering to MAP policies—sellers whom our clients were previously unaware were distributing their products," explains Portugal.
To learn more about MAP Services call (828) 393-4076 or click:
