When a Supermarket Has Only One Supplier, Who Makes the Rules?

Imagine a supermarket with a hundred suppliers.

The supermarket is powerful.

It can set standards.

It can negotiate prices.

It can decide when goods must arrive, how they should be packaged, and how payment will be made.

If one supplier refuses?

No problem.

There are ninety-nine others.

That suggests something simple:

The supermarket’s power does not come only from owning the shelves.

It comes from having alternatives.

Now change one thing.

Imagine that one day the supermarket has only a few suppliers left.

Then two.

Then perhaps only one.

The supermarket still owns the building.

It still owns the shelves.

It still has the customers.

It still controls the checkout counters.

Its contracts may even look exactly the same.

But one sentence has lost most of its power:

“If you don’t agree, I’ll buy from someone else.”

Because there may no longer be someone else.

At that point, who really makes the rules?

The supermarket that owns the shelves?

Or the supplier the supermarket can no longer replace?

Perhaps the power of a middleman depends less on how large it is than on something much simpler:

how many alternatives still exist on the other side.

The supermarket may still control the checkout counter.

But if only one supplier can fill the shelves, the balance of power has already changed.