All of the yarn consumer watch blogs ended in a whimper. Now I have to go back to places like the Wall Street Journal blog if I want to see people debate antitrust.

“Can Fixed Minimum Retail Prices Be a Benefit for Consumers?”

Sadly, the experts in the article don’t actually answer that question. Larry White, a former director of economic policy at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, offered this theory about how price-fixing might benefit both the manufacturer and the retailer:

The answer — as Lester Telser explained in 1960 — is that a manufacturer may want retailers to provide tough-to-monitor, but important, point-of-sale services: For example, advice and demonstration of complex electronics. The problem is that such services can be costly and susceptible to free riding.

In other words, under the current rules “Sam, the Catalog Store” may tell customers to get their demonstrations down the block at “Joe’s Full Service Store” and then come back to Sam’s to buy the product. He can sell it for 10% less because he doesn’t provide any of the costly demonstrations. But, of course, then Joe can’t stay in business, the service isn’t provided, and the manufacturer’s sales suffer.

That scenario seems to be an excellent fit to the conflict between bricks-and-mortar stores and their strictly-online counterparts. That said, if this is the motivation behind manufacturer keystone pricing, it’s a poor one. In my experience both as a consumer and a yarn store attendant, if people like a yarn in a store, they buy it. Most people don’t have time to do exhaustive bargain shopping on their craft supplies. People buy online when

• they’ve already tried the yarn, and like it enough to seek out for their next project.
• they’ve fallen in love with a pattern that calls for the yarn.
• they’ve fallen in love with a pattern but the yarn in it is prohibitively expensive so they need to find a cheap alternative.

By that logic, a luxury yarn manufacturer shouldn’t waste their time quibbling with discount websites. As long as luxury yarn makers impress the rock star pattern designers, online discounts will sell high-priced yarn to people who might’ve settled for Knitpicks.

P.S. The yarn in the picture is for Stefanie Japel’s Cropped Cardigan with Leaf Ties.