The high price of luxury fashion: €157 million fines for RPM
17 October 2025
On 14 October 2025, the European Commission fined Gucci, Chloé and Loewe a total of EUR 157 million for breaching competition law by fixing the resale prices charged by independent retailers.
What you need to know
- All retailers should be free to set their own prices. Resale price maintenance (RPM) arises where an independent retailer is instructed by its supplier to sell products at a fixed or minimum resale price. Maximum or recommended prices are permitted, provided that these do not act as fixed or minimum prices in practice.
- According to the European Court of Justice in the Coty case, suppliers of luxury goods can impose certain restrictions on retailers within a selective distribution system where the objective is to preserve the luxury image of those goods. However, this is unlikely to extend to RPM restrictions, particularly where the supplier also competes directly with retailers through its own sales channels.
- RPM, both online and in bricks-and-mortar stores, continues to be an enforcement priority for European competition regulators, illustrated by these latest fines on leading Italian, French and Spanish luxury brands.
Latest infringement decisions
According to the European Commission's press release, Gucci, Chloé and Loewe independently restricted the ability of third-party retailers to set their own online and offline sales prices for branded products, affecting their ranges of clothing, shoes, accessories and leather goods. In particular, the brands required retailers to implement:
- recommended retail prices;
- maximum rates of discounts. In some cases, retailers were prohibited from discounting at all, at least temporarily; and
- specific sale periods.
Gucci also banned retailers from selling certain products online, constituting an online sales restriction. The aim of these practices was for retailers to match the prices and sales conditions of the brands' own direct sales channels. These practices deprived the retailers of their ability to set their prices independently, and reduced competition between them. The brands also sought to protect their own direct sales channels from competition from the retailers.
The practices began in April 2015 (Gucci), December 2015 (Loewe) and December 2019 (Chloé) and lasted until the European Commission's dawn raids in April 2023. The infringements were found to be EEA-wide. Gucci received the largest fine of EUR 119.6 million. Chloé and Loewe were fined EUR 19.7 million and EUR 18 million respectively. These fines reflect discounts for cooperation with the investigation under the European Commission's antitrust cooperation procedure (including by acknowledging the findings of fact and infringement): Gucci and Loewe each received 50% discounts for their prompt, early stage cooperation, while Chloé was slower to react, receiving a discount of 15%.
The full text versions of the European Commission's infringement decisions are yet to be published.
Previous fines for RPM
The European Commission and national regulators have tended to take a sector-by-sector approach to addressing RPM:
- These latest fines in the luxury fashion sector follow the European Commission's November 2024 fine of EUR 5.7 million on fashion brand Pierre Cardin and one of its licensed distributors, Ahlers, for restricting cross-border sales and sales to discount retailers. See our December 2024 update.
- In December 2024, the French Competition Authority fined ten manufacturers of household appliances and two of their bricks-and-mortar distributors EUR 611 million for RPM infringements.
- In 2019 and 2020, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined five musical instruments suppliers more than £13.7 million for restricting online discounting by their independent retailers. One musical instruments retailer also admitted to engaging in RPM, and agreed to pay a fine of more than £250,000. The CMA also sent warning letters to almost 70 other musical instruments suppliers and retailers whom it suspected of engaging in RPM.
- In 2018, the European Commission fined four consumer electronics manufacturers EUR 111 million for engaging in resale price maintenance with online retailers.
Want to know more?
For further guidance on RPM and vertical agreements, please refer to our Quickguides:
