Placement contract

Definition

The agreement with a store that lets a machine stand where it stands, and sets the commission.

Why It Matters

A route is a collection of these and almost nothing else. Each names a term, a commission to the location, and the conditions under which either side can walk, and the terms are usually short. That makes the concentration question sharper than it looks: a route with two hundred machines and forty in one chain is a route with one contract. Read the termination clauses before the transaction counts, and find out which locations have been approached by a competitor recently.