No-one was violating the MAP before - search for a Benchmade knife and you wouldn't find it advertised for any less than 15% off of MSRP. That was the Minimum Advertised Price and dealers stuck to it - lower prices were sometimes available but not advertised. What is being enforced now is not an MAP policy but more akin to a unilateral pricing policy where dealers cannot sell for less than 15% off of MSRP at all.
And if making an "actual margin" was a concern - why are there dealers who are perfectly willing to sell, for example, 0560/0561s for less than the MAP price of $260? If the margin was that big of a deal, they'd just stick to that and say they couldn't budge lower. But since they're willing to sell for lower, and regularly (not just for temporary sales), that kind of suggests that they think that either a) the MAP is overvaluing the product, and it needs to be lower to move properly or b) they can make more even with a smaller margin from a higher volume of sales driven by a lower price. ZT dealers still have the option to make that call and find the balance themselves should they choose, even if they can't advertise that lower price. BM dealers no longer have the option available to them.
Of course you can't find them selling below MAP now, that's what this thread is about. Plenty of dealers violated Benchmade's MAP before the recent changes, and I'm sure that there are those out there that do so on ZT (though, in just a quick check, the only 0560 or 0561, or their variants, that were sold below $260 were on eBay or Amazon, at least in the first 12 sites I checked that were selling, with a search of "ZT 0560"), and the difference right now is that ZT isn't as strictly enforcing their's as Benchmade is. The problem popped up because of a "difference in opinion" over what violating MAP looked like - specifically, plenty of online retailers tried to get around MAP by advertising a 15% discount and then a coupon that would take an additional discount off the original price, or having you give the retailer your email so you could get a price that would have clearly violated MAP if it was posted.
It's obviously not a verified scientific but of research, but based on the search I did, ZT MAP is being followed pretty closely by the big online retailers (except for Amazon, but that's a totally different story), so I'm guessing that either they are being required to stay at no lower than that price (same as Benchmade) or they are all colluding together to not post a lower price (unlikely, but funny, and not just because I like the work "colluding"). The balance to find is whether you can sell more at MAP, at MSRP, or somewhere in between - and that's going to depend a lot on whether you have a retail location where customers can come and handle the product before buying or whether you sell knives out of your garage. I know a lot of brick and mortar stores can make a pretty good argument that the services you get from coming into their stores are worth a few extra bucks.
You bring up an interesting issue though - that MAP can lead to overvaluing a product. One of the reasons for MAP is to keep a product from becoming
undervalued. There is a thing called perceived value of a product, and essentially it means that there is a price which is too cheap or too high and going past either one will kill your sales. And what the consistent violation of MAP has done is to reduce the perceived value of the products involved. It's what's happening to Spyderco (outside of Blade Forums) - almost all of their knives are easily found at or below wholesale cost, and this consistent discounting of more than 50% makes the pricing for their whole line seem ludicrous to customers (and dealers). And in customer's (and again, in dealer's) eyes, the product isn't worth as much (of a lower quality) than those products which sell closer to their MSRP. Which is one other things that Benchmade wants to avoid, which is why they have reinforced their pricing policies. If that means you stop buying their knives, that's a bummer. I'm personally getting the 940-1 the minute it comes into my local shop.
