Italian wholesaler hits out at price comparison websites

In recent times a website in Italy has raised the hackles of at least one wholesaler within that country. The site, gommaflash.com, uses an application that offers tyre dealers – for an annual fee of between 500 and 700 euros – the opportunity to view and compare the prices and conditions offered by all distributors. GommaFlash obtains the information by using the dealer’s passwords to enter each B2B distributor’s platform. Prices and other information are displayed in real time.

The problem is that not all wholesalers welcome these visits from GommaFlash. One of Italy’s largest wholesalers, Tagliabue Gomme Gross, is even encouraging the sector to boycott GommaFlash and other similar websites. Speaking with our Italian sister website PneusNews.it, Tagliabue Gomme Gross co-owner Carlo Tagliabue expresses his exasperation with a concept he believes frustrates the efforts wholesalers undertake to provide a complete commercial strategy. 

“It all comes down to a question of price,” he comments regarding sites such as GommaFlash. “And this overlooks the value of the additional incentives a wholesaler offers.” Tagliabue adds that the website makes its money by utilising the work performed by others: “It’s a good source of income, one made without moving a single pallet of tyres!..For me, true value is created by work and not through forms of parasitism.”

In the company’s initial contact with PneusNews, Tagliabue Gomme Gross said it would implement its own defence against GommaFlash. The wholesaler had been working with a software specialist, 3Tech Group, to develop a kind of patch that blocks GommaFlash’s access to its B2B site. “Our database is reserved for our customers and not for third parties,” Tagliabue comments. The patch is now ready and, as promised, Tagliabue has made it freely available. It can be found on the PneusNews.it site here.

A week after PneusNews.it first published news of Tagliabue Gomme Gross and its battle with GommaFlash, Giuseppe Coppola, one of GommaFlash Srl’s proprietors, sent the Italian tyre industry news site a letter defending its actions. “We read with astonishment and disappointment Tagliabue’s criticism against the service GommaFlash Srl offers to tyre specialists,” Coppola’s letter stated. He added that Tagliabue’s comments were harsh and offensive “not only against us and our work, but also to the tyre and the other operators who, for a year now, have used the GommaFlash service productively and with satisfaction.”

Giuseppe Coppola describes GommaFlash as functioning as a search engine that doesn’t index or retain content from other sites, and he says his company is willing to establish confidentiality agreements with wholesalers should they harbour concerns about the confidentiality of their data.

Although the GommaFlash concept is legal, it certainly raises an interesting question on the right a wholesaler has to retain control over who is, and who isn’t, granted access to its own dealer B2B site. At any rate, it would be premature to declare Tagliabue Gomme Gross’s fight with price comparison sites as won and over.