[nicholaides]

I have a relative who has a farm that sells products wholesale to a large supermarket chain (not Walmart). One of the supermarket's tactics: place huge orders from you so that you have to ramp up production and invest in new equipment, labor, livestock, etc, and then, once you're ramped up, they stop ordering as much so that your supply is significantly higher than demand and they can dictate very favorable pricing for themselves.

[holy_city]

If taking orders in that volume require significant investment, wouldn't you make sure they commit to the order volume over the next N years until the capital investment is paid off?

[delfinom]

Many "mom and pop" and "small" and medium businesses fall for it. They simply aren't used to implications of what Walmart or large retailer scaling will require or do to them.