The supermarket supplier's lot is rarely a happy one
I am a reasonable man. If I stock the cakes you make in my bijou shop, Honest Jon's Classy Patisserie, it is reasonable you should pay me something for displaying them prominently. Equally, if I decide to run a special offer on your éclairs, I would reasonably expect you to absorb the cost of the reduction. My associate Big Eric will drop round to discuss it. Pay for his petrol and no family heirlooms, or limbs, will get broken. Like me, Big Eric is a reasonable man.
My diversification into selling cakes sourced cheaply from health-conscious bakers illustrates an important principle. What is "reasonable" in an unequal relationship tends to be defined by the individual with all the power. So it is no surprise a 2000 code of conduct meant to stop supermarkets bullying their suppliers, which is sprinkled as liberally with requirements for "reasonable" behaviour as a sticky bun is with sugar, has flopped.
This is why Gerry Sutcliffe, the competition minister, has called in Asda, Tesco, J.Sainsbury and Safeway/ Morrison for a grilling next week. It is also why the Office of Fair Trading has commissioned auditors to seek evidence of abuses perpetrated by supermarkets against their suppliers, such as persistent late payment, demands for marketing subsidies and peremptory revision of supply agreements.
Many suppliers, ranging from big brand owners and food processors to farmers, believe these abuses are widespread. Terry Jones of the National Farmers Union relates the following example: "A supermarket went to a packing business and said: 'The opportunity to trade with us will cost you ￡250,000.' The supplier came to the NFU because it could not afford the payment, or to lose the business. We threatened to blow the whistle to the FT, and at that point the retailer caved in."
The weakness of that story is that Mr Jones will not name names. The supplier is afraid of being blacklisted by supermarkets if it complains publicly. The code has the same defect. Guy Lougher, competition partner at Wragge & Co, the law firm, says: "It has been totally pointless from the point of view of suppliers. They will not stick their heads above the parapet and report breaches to the OFT because they fear customers will punish them later."
Richard Ali, head of food policy at the British Retail Consortium, is unimpressed. He says: "If people have examples of specific abuses they should come forward." Tesco adds: "The fact there have been no complaints does not mean the code is not working. Besides, we have very close relationships with our suppliers and we do not usually need to fall back on the code."
That sounds like a way of saying that the code is an irrelevance. Hardly surprising when the supermarkets, employing the finest corn-fed lobbyists money could buy, persuaded the government to emasculate the tough draft code proposed by the Competition Commission in 2000. The same wimpishness is apparent in the segmentation by the competition authorities of grocery retailing into three separate markets. This sophistry allowed Tesco, which has an overall market share of 27 per cent, to continue its push into convenience stores unchallenged in 2002, with the ￡337m purchase of the T&S store chain.
Why, you may ask, should anyone give a stuff about any of this? The supermarkets are convenient, jam-packed with cheap products and compete ferociously, as the woes suffered by Sainsbury illustrate. Shoppers have never had it so good.
The beef of the Competition Commission, expressed in a report last year into the Safeway takeover battle, was this: the Big Four supermarkets, controlling over 80 per cent of grocery retailing, could act as a monopoly without even realising it. This could unfairly damage suppliers, stifling innovation, forcing consolidation and eventually reducing customer choice.
I have a different gripe. If supermarkets, by flexing their huge muscle, destroy small-scale enterprise in food production and grocery retailing, far fewer Britons will be able to realise the ambition of running their own businesses. I do not want Mr Patel reduced to working as a shelf stacker at a Tesco Express. I want him to go on operating his mini-market at the end of my street and putting his kids through college on the proceeds. For me, that is as important a social good as being able to buy cheap yoghurt.
Small shopkeepers such as Shamus Lehal, who runs a convenience store in Wootton, Bedfordshire, want a ban on retail chains such as Tesco loss-leading on staple products in their convenience chains. He says: "If they discount as heavily there as in their supermarkets they will kill us all off." But prohibiting below-cost sales would put further pressure on suppliers to cut prices. Better to scrap the questionable tripartite split in competitive definitions of groceries retailing. This would subject the incursion of supermarkets into the convenience sector to greater antitrust scrutiny.
There is merit, meanwhile, in Liberal Democrat proposals to toughen up the code on suppliers. Andrew George, rural affairs spokesman, wants all those rules qualified thuggishly with "reasonable" to be replaced with enforceable specifics. Supermarkets would, for example, have to pay suppliers in 30 days, and could not charge them for shelf space or promotions. A full-time snoop at the OFT would nose out abuses.
Then it would all be up for Big Eric and me. We would have to take off our floral pinnies and mush the unsold cream horns into the faces of our least favoured customers. We would have to torch Honest Jon's Classy Patisserie for the insurance money and return to the grimy business of cut-and-shut motor engineering. Into every life a little rain must fall, as Big Eric sometimes remarks, proving he has a philosophical side as well as a reasonable one.
jonathan.guthrie@ft.com 超市供货商日子不好过
我是一个通情达理的人，开有一家名为诚实乔恩精品法式蛋糕的小店(Honest Jon’s Classy Patisserie)。如果你想通过我的小店来卖你做的蛋糕，并且让我把它们放在比较醒目的地方，那么你付我一点费用是合理的。同样，如果我决定为你的法国小蛋糕进行促销，那么我自然希望你能够承担打折的成本。我的伙计大埃里克(Big Eric)会到你这里来转转，商量一下这件事。我要为他付汽油费，还要保证他四肢完好。和我一样，大埃里克也是个通情达理的人。
我从具有健康意识的面包商那里采购来廉价蛋糕，再把它卖出去。借助这个办法，我实现了进货渠道的多样化。我的经历说明了一个重要的道理。在一个不平等的关系中，“合理”(reasonable)的定义往往由掌握所有权力的一方来定义。所以在2000年，一项阻止超级市场欺压供货商的行为准则以失败告终，也就不足为奇了。这项准则只是点缀了一些要求“合理”行为的条款，就象是撒在面包圈上的糖衣，看似公平，却不堪一击。
这就是为什么竞争事务大臣杰里?舒特克里夫(Gerry Sutcliffe)要召集阿斯达超市(Asda)、特易购超市(Tesco)、圣斯伯雷超市(J. Sainsbury)和瑟夫威/默里森超市(Safeway/Morrison)在下星期接受质询的原因，也是为什么公平贸易办公室要委托审计部门寻找超市欺压供货商证据的原因。这方面的证据包括长期延迟付款、向供货商索要市场推销津贴，以及单方面强制修改合同等。
很多供货商，从名牌拥有者、食品加工商到普通农民，都认为这种欺压行为普遍存在。国家农民联盟(National Farmers Union)的特瑞?琼斯(Terry Jones)举了下面这个例子：“一家超市对一个包装公司说：‘想和我们做生意的话，你必须交25万英镑。’由于无法承担这笔费用，又不想失去这笔生意，该供货商只得向国家农民联盟求助。当我们威胁要把此事捅给《金融时报》时，超市才不得不做出让步。”
这个事例的缺陷在于，琼斯先生不能透露公司的名字。供货商害怕的是，如果他公开抱怨的话，会被列入超市的黑名单。而那项准则也有同样的缺陷。莱格律师事务所(Wragge & Co)负责竞争事务的合伙人盖?娄弗尔(Guy Lougher)对此这样评价：“从供货商的角度而言，该准则毫无意义。他们不会为了向公平贸易办公室举报超市的违规行为而抛头露面，因为它们害怕日后会遭到报复。”
英国零售联盟(British Retail Consortium)的食品政策主管里查德?阿里(Richard Ali)不认同这种观点。他说：“如果人们掌握了超市欺压行为的具体例子，他们应该说出来。”特易购超市则补充说：“没有抱怨并不能说明准则没有起到作用。另外，我们和供货商保持着非常紧密的联系，一般不需要借助准则来解决问题。”
这听上去好象是说，准则只是个细枝末节的问题。面对竞争事务委员会在2000年提出的强硬准则草案，超市花钱聘请了最好的说客，因此能最后说服政府把该草案削弱就一点也不奇怪。在竞争事务委员会决定把食品杂货零售业分割成三块独立市场的时候，人们又听见了来自超市同样的哭喊声。这次近乎诡辩的游说，使得拥有27%市场份额的特易购超市向便利店领域进军的努力一直持续到2002年，期间没有受到任何挑战，T&S连锁便利店就这样被它以3.37亿英镑买了下来。
也许你会问，为什么要对这些事唠叨个没完？超市非常方便，里面堆满了各种廉价商品，它们之间的竞争也非常残酷，这从圣斯伯雷超市遭受的不幸就可以看出来。消费者从来都没享受过这么好的待遇。
竞争事务委员会就去年瑟夫威(Safeway)的并购案发表了一份报告，从中可以发现他们的顾虑，那就是：占据了食品杂货零售市场80%份额的四大超市，可能在不知不觉中成为垄断者。这会不公平地损害供货商的利益、压制创新、促使行业出现更多整合，最终减少消费者的选择权。
我还有其他方面的担忧。如果超市只要显示一下自己强壮的肌肉，就能摧毁小型食品生产商和零售杂货店的话，那么，就几乎没什么英国人能实现他们创建自己家业的雄心壮志了。我不希望帕特尔先生(Mr Patel)沦为特易购便利店的一个货品摆放员。我希望他继续经营我们家那条街头上的那家小店，并用开店得来的收益供他的孩子们上完大学。对我来说，这是具有积极社会意义的重要好事，就和能买到便宜酸奶一样重要。
一些小店主，比如在贝德弗德郡(Bedfordshire)的沃顿(Wootton)经营一家便利店的沙姆斯?雷赫(Shamus Lehal)，希望能有一条禁令，阻止象特易购这样的零售连锁超市对其便利店里的主要商品进行亏本销售。他表示：“如果他们在便利店卖得和在超市里一样便宜的话，他们会把我们赶尽杀绝。”但是，如果禁止低于成本销售，就会给供货商带来更多削价的压力。更好的办法是，取消将食品杂货零售业的竞争定义一分为三这种颇有疑问的做法，这样能使超市对便利店领域的入侵受到更多的反垄断监督。
同时，自由民主党关于该准则应该对供货商更加严格的提议也有其可取之处。该党农村事务发言人安德鲁?乔治(Andrew George)认为，应把所有那些其实没有道理的“合理”条款替换成能被切实执行的具体细节。比如，超市必须在30天内向供货商付款，并且不得向他们收取上架费或促销活动费。公平贸易办公室将派出全职调查员，巡查这些违规行为。
现在，轮到我和大埃里克吃苦头了。我们将不得不脱下我们的印花围兜，把没有卖掉的冰激淋蛋筒掰碎，然后扔在最讨厌的顾客脸上。我们将不得不一把火烧了诚实乔恩精品法式蛋糕店，以换取保险赔偿金，然后回到脏兮兮的违法电机生意中去。人生难免经历风雨, 大埃里克的这番评论证明他不仅通情达理，而且颇有哲学头脑。
