There were more retailers involved in the scheme, but the company was the initiator of the infringement, and the KP decided to impose liability only on Mirastyle Ltd.
Mirastyle Ltd is the exclusive distributor in Latvia of several lighting manufacturers. At the wholesale level, the company sells lighting products to retail and home improvement stores, including online shops, while at the retail level Mirastyle owns two 'Gaismas maģija' stores in Riga, as well as an online shop www.gaismasmarket.lv, which delivers products throughout the European Union.
The KP found that Mirastyle Ltd set the prices for at least two retailers who purchased goods from Mirastyle Ltd at which they were allowed to sell these goods to end customers.
Mirastyle sent e-mails to the retailers stating: "Immediately make price adjustments in line with the recommended prices in the price lists", otherwise they would be banned from distributing the goods in Latvia.
As a result, these retailers were prevented from independently setting the retail prices of the different manufacturers of lighting items purchased from Mirastyle Ltd, instead being given a single, higher price.
The KP also found that Mirastyle Ltd exchanged commercially sensitive information with other retailers, which were also competitors of Mirastyle Ltd, concerning the projects for which the lighting equipment was purchased.
If, as a result of this exchange of information, it was found that a retailer wishing to purchase lighting products from Mirastyle had not itself developed a lighting design according to the customer's wishes for a particular site, but that it had been developed by Mirastyle or another company, the order was refused.
Given that Mirastyle Ltd. is the exclusive distributor in Latvia for a large part of the brands it represents, in situations where there was a risk that the client might purchase the lighting he was interested in from distributors outside Latvia, Mirastyle Ltd approached the manufacturer in order to prevent the customer from purchasing the products elsewhere.
At the same time, the end customer was given the impression that the preparation of the lighting design project was offered free of charge and that the customer was then free to choose where to purchase the goods. However, the customer could only purchase the goods envisaged in the lighting design from the company that had prepared the design - Mirastyle Ltd or another company that had prepared the design and to which the goods had been reserved. The KP found that Mirastyle Ltd had in this way implemented market division.
