Luxury brands can restrict retailers from selling their products on web platforms like Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. to protect their image, the European Union’s top court ruled last week.
"We want to be responsible operators and buyers," says Max Verstraete, vice president of corporate responsibility for Hilton. The hospitality company, which has 14 brands covering more than 5,000 properties in 104 countries and territories, buys a lot of products. "Whether it’s furniture or ketchup bottles for room service trays, TVs, electronics — pretty much anything you can think of — we’re probably buying," he says.
When drug company chief executive Heather Bresch was hauled in front of Congress last year to defend the high price of lifesaving EpiPens, she drew skeptical lawmakers’ attention to a large poster board that blamed the skyrocketing price tag on a coterie of drug supply chain middlemen. Of EpiPen’s $608 list price, her company, Mylan, received only $274, Bresch said.