For those who don't know, many of the outdoor gear manufactures attempt to enforce MAP (minimum advertised price). This is also called "Resale price maintenance".

Wikipedia: "Resale price maintenance is the practice whereby a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the latter will sell the former's product at certain prices (resale price maintenance), at or above a price floor (minimum resale price maintenance) or at or below a price ceiling (maximum resale price maintenance)."

Basically what this means to you is free competition is prohibited and therefore consumers pay higher prices. If a retailer trys to sell products at lower prices they are contacted by the manufacture and threatened with loss of all future sales.

Read this:
Wall Street Journal - Discounters, Monitors Face Battle on Minimum Pricing

Today EBay, Costco and many other retailer's are going to try to pass a law to ban manufactures from setting MAP.

Spadout believes MAP is bad for consumers as well as the outdoor market and believes free trade should be allowed.