Zvezda Case Study: How a Manufacturer Has Kept MAP Under Control for 5 Years

We spoke with Sergey Shipilov, Sales Director at Zvezda, to learn how Priceva's price monitoring service has helped an established scale model manufacturer effectively monitor market prices and maintain MAP compliance for five years.

About the Company

Zvezda is an established manufacturer of scale model kits and board games that has been operating since 1990. The company has its own manufacturing facilities and produces more than 600 scale model kits and board games. Its products are sold through an extensive network of retail and distribution partners, including international markets.

The company operates a full production cycle, from product development through manufacturing to sales. It has its own design bureau, tooling department, production facilities, machinery, and packaging operations. Only printed materials and boxes are produced externally.

The manufacturer's core product range consists of plastic scale model kits, including aircraft, tanks, and ships. These are creative model-building kits that customers assemble according to specific instructions to create accurate miniature replicas at a particular scale.

Another area in which the company is developing its product range is board games. Zvezda supplies more than 100 educational and entertainment games for children and adults. Some of the games are developed in-house, while others are localized products sourced from external manufacturers.

Zvezda works with around 500 customers, ranging from large wholesalers to small businesses. For the past five years, the company has used Priceva to monitor MAP compliance.

Using Automated Price Monitoring to Maintain MAP Compliance

1. Goal

Use price monitoring across the company's partners to ensure that market participants comply with Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) requirements and prevent price dumping among sellers.

2. Objectives

Establish strict control over MAP compliance.
Automate the price monitoring process.
Consolidate pricing information into a single table.
Ensure regular price checks.
Keep monitoring service costs at an optimal level.

3. Problems That Led to Price Monitoring

Some sellers significantly reduced prices and violated MAP requirements, resulting in unequal competition and losses for the most vulnerable sellers.
The company regularly received complaints from market participants about one another.
It was difficult to monitor sellers that did not purchase products directly from the manufacturer but instead resold products obtained from wholesalers.
Manual monitoring would have required a large team of employees dedicated to price control.

4. Criteria for Selecting a Monitoring Service

The company needed a tool that could:

provide the most comprehensive possible information about product prices on marketplaces and online stores;
organize data in a convenient format and provide the required breakdowns;
ensure regular and timely price checks and promptly notify the company of violations;
provide all of these capabilities at an acceptable cost.

5. Product Range Under Monitoring

Around 500 products across 50 websites are monitored.
Monitoring primarily covers marketplaces and large wholesale websites that may violate MAP requirements.

The company also monitors online stores specializing in scale models. Zvezda products can make up a significant part of these retailers' assortments. If another seller begins aggressively lowering prices, these specialized retailers can experience an immediate and significant decline in profitability.

6. Monitoring Frequency and Data Processing

Price monitoring is conducted once every two days to maintain control over partner pricing. Following each monitoring cycle, email notifications are sent so that the company can respond quickly to violations.

Information about partners engaged in price dumping is forwarded directly to the relevant managers, who then work with the sellers involved.
A consolidated report containing price dumping data is prepared once every one to two weeks.

7. Who Works With the Service

The Commercial Director and Sales Director have access to the Priceva account.

Reports generated from the data collected by the service are used by all relevant employees within the commercial department.

8. Time Spent Working With the Service

One employee spends approximately one hour every two days processing notifications.
For strategic evaluation, the company spends 2–3 hours once a week reviewing the data.

Conclusion

For Zvezda, automated price monitoring has become a long-term part of its approach to MAP compliance. For five years, Priceva has helped the company regularly monitor around 500 products across 50 websites, identify pricing violations, and provide relevant teams with the data they need to respond. Instead of relying on extensive manual monitoring, the company has a structured process that requires only a few hours of employee time each week while maintaining regular oversight of partner pricing.

For manufacturers working with large networks of retailers, wholesalers, and online sellers, this case demonstrates how automated monitoring can make MAP control more systematic and manageable.

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