Client protection, in depth
How we protect your client relationship
This is the long version of the client-protection summary on the Agency Desk page. It sets out what “registered”, “non-solicitation” and “confidential” actually mean in practice, who is covered on which path, what happens when a relationship ends badly, and the one limit no fulfilment provider can honestly design away.
Registered-client protection applies on Co-Manage, White Label and Strategic accounts, where your agency owns the client. Refer is different by design: a seller you introduce becomes RyanFulfil’s client, and we contract with, invoice, support and price that seller, with your named commission disclosed inside the quote we issue them. That is the path, not a gap in it.
- Operating since 2018
- 500+ active client accounts
- 4,000+ orders fulfilled daily
- Ships to 150+ countries
500+ active client accounts and 4,000+ orders fulfilled daily are RyanFulfil’s own current operating figures across the whole business, not figures for this programme, which is new.
Registered-client ownership
What “registered” actually means
The flagship page says clients you register are recorded as yours. This is the mechanism underneath that sentence: when protection begins, what the record ties together, and who inside RyanFulfil sees the status before anyone speaks to your client.
Protection starts at registration
You register the client at the point you win them, before any sourcing or quoting work begins. The protection attaches to that act, not to the first order. On Co-Manage, White Label and Strategic that means the relationship is recorded as yours from the moment work could start, which is exactly when it matters.
What the record ties together
The record links the client’s identity to your account and carries every store you run for them underneath it. It does not need your client’s pricing, your margin or your contract to do its job. Ownership is a status flag on a relationship, not a copy of your commercial terms.
Who sees the status, and when
Our sales and operations people see the ownership status on a client before any contact is made, so a protected client is never treated as an open lead. Protected partner clients are suppressed from direct marketing, so they do not receive a “come to us directly” message by accident.
What registration is, and is not
Registration is account-level protection for a specific client relationship, and it is real and enforceable. It is not a claim on a territory, an industry or a product. First accepted registration wins, and a registration is only accepted once we confirm the client is genuinely new to us rather than someone already in conversation with RyanFulfil. There is no retroactive claim based on having known a seller before you registered them.
Non-solicitation
The rule, tested against the situations that actually happen
On Co-Manage, White Label and Strategic accounts we do not approach your registered clients to move them onto a direct RyanFulfil account, and we do not quote around you. That holds for as long as the client stays registered with your agency, with no fixed tail after that: the protection follows the registration, not a date. That is easy to write. Here is how it holds up in the four moments where a weaker promise falls apart.
Your client contacts us directly
A client who reaches our operations channel, or finds a public RyanFulfil address, is routed back to you. We answer what we must to keep an order safe, but we do not treat the contact as an opening to convert them, and we do not quote them a price behind your back. The relationship stays yours.
Your client turns up as a “new” enquiry
When a seller enquires who is already your registered client, the ownership check surfaces it and we route them back to you rather than opening a parallel account. First accepted registration wins. A client already in a direct conversation with us before you registered them is the one case that does not flip — see the channel-conflict controls below.
A client asks us to work around you
If a protected client asks us to price or fulfil for them directly, cutting you out, we decline and point them back to you. We will not use a client’s frustration in a bad week as a reason to take the account. Where an order is genuinely at risk, the exception rules below govern what we may do, and they are narrow.
Refer is the deliberate exception
On the Refer path a seller you introduce becomes RyanFulfil’s client on purpose: we contract, invoice, support and set their price, and your named commission is disclosed inside the quote we issue them. Non-solicitation does not apply there because there is nothing to solicit away — the seller was ours by the design of the path. How the referral path works →
What non-solicitation does not cover
Non-solicitation protects the relationship and the information behind it. It is not a promise that no other seller can ever source the same public product, because that is a promise no honest provider can make. The line between the two is the whole point of the limit at the bottom of this page.
Confidentiality of product, price and sales data
Your information is the asset. Here is exactly what is fenced.
The reason to work through a partner account rather than introduce your client to somebody else is that the introduction hands over information. This is the line between what we keep confidential to you and what nobody can fence, because it was public before you arrived.
Protected, and confidential to you
Yours under the partner agreement. Not reused to build anyone else an offer.
- Your client’s identity and contact details
- The net product and shipping costs we quoted youYour negotiated numbers, not a public rate card.
- Your client’s SKUs, variants and specifications
- Your margin and the price your client paysOn white label we do not even see it.
- Order volumes and sales figures
- The supplier work and research done on your briefThe factory we found and vetted, sample results, the product testing behind a decision.
Public, and outside anyone’s control
Not confidential, because it was never yours to fence.
- A publicly listed product anyone can requestA listing stays public whoever asks about it.
- General category and market knowledge
- A supplier that is openly listed and quoting anyoneWe can protect the work we did for you, not the existence of a public factory.
- The fact that a product ships from China
No reuse of your private research
The sourcing work you commission is done for you. We do not take the supplier we found for your brief, the sample outcomes you paid to learn, or the research behind a winning product, and hand any of it to another partner or seller as a ready-made offer. Two partners can independently ask us to source the same public product and both get served. Neither of them receives the other’s research, costs or client list to shortcut the work.
No public reference programme
We do not require your agency or client to appear in a public directory, publish a review, provide a logo or store URL, or take reference calls. Public proof uses aggregate figures and anonymised operating situations because revealing who fulfils a dropshipping store — or who operates behind an agency — can damage the relationship the service is meant to support.
Separate records and the operations channel
Separate records per client, and a channel that is only yours
Two structural controls sit under the promises above. They are not policies that depend on someone remembering to be careful; they are how the account is built.
A separate invoice record for every client and store
Each client store has its own invoicing allocation. One client’s data does not surface inside another client’s working record, even when you run several through one partner relationship. Billing can be tracked in the working Excel file or shared Google Sheet, with client-level and store-level allocation, so you can pass through or absorb per client without unpicking a single total.
The separation is also what makes a clean ending possible: because a client is a discrete record rather than a thread tangled through your whole account, they can be lifted out without disturbing your other clients when a relationship changes.
A partner-only operations channel
On co-managed and white-label accounts our conversation is with you, not with your client. During the founding pilot that is a dedicated WhatsApp thread with the partner, not a shared inbox your client can reach into. Quotes, sourcing decisions, exceptions and reporting run through it to you, and you decide what your client sees.
WhatsApp plus the invoice or order spreadsheet is the current operating layer, not a temporary imitation of a portal. There is no partner login to maintain, and none is promised. Direct contact with your client needs your approval outside the defined emergencies covered below.
Documented exception and offboarding rules
What happens when something goes wrong or a relationship ends
Protection that only works while everyone behaves is not protection. These three endings are written into the partner agreement in advance, so nobody has to improvise them during a bad week. Live orders and paying end customers do not pause while the humans sort themselves out.
Your client leaves your agency
The client can consent to move between direct, co-managed and white-label status. What we will not do is treat their departure from you as an opportunity to convert them, and what we will not do is strand their orders mid-fulfilment. Because each client is a separate record, the move is a clean transfer of one relationship rather than an unpicking of your account.
Your agency goes quiet
There is a documented business-continuity exception for the case where a partner stops responding while orders are live. It exists because paying end customers are waiting on parcels that a silent partner cannot release, and letting those fail to make a point helps no one. What we may do, and the narrow conditions for it, are set in the partner terms rather than decided in the moment.
An order is stranded mid-fulfilment
An order already purchased, packed or in transit when a relationship changes gets completed or resolved, with the tracking and evidence returned, rather than abandoned at whatever step it had reached. A safety, compliance or stranded-shipment issue where waiting would make things worse is one of the few situations where we may contact a client directly, and it is defined in advance.
Where the binding version lives
This page is the plain-English version and it is written to be accurate. The binding version is the schedule in the partner agreement you sign, alongside the service scope and claims framework set out on the service-levels page. Where the two ever differ, the signed agreement governs and this page is the copy that is wrong — tell us and we will fix it.
Channel-conflict controls
The controls that stop the programme eating direct business
A partner programme run over an existing direct business creates obvious conflicts. Rather than promise those away, we bound them. These three are the rules that keep the two sides honest with each other.
Existing RyanFulfil clients stay direct
A seller already in conversation with us, or already a direct client, stays direct. You cannot claim an existing RyanFulfil client by registering them under your account. Protection is for the clients you bring, not for the ones already here.
No retroactive claims
Protection begins at accepted registration and runs forward. There is no claim based on having previously known a seller, and no backdating a registration to capture a client who was already ours. First accepted registration wins, once we confirm the introduction is genuinely new.
No territory exclusivity at launch
Account-level protection for the clients you register is real and enforceable. Territory or category exclusivity is not offered at launch, because it is a promise we could not police and we are not going to make one we cannot keep. What you get is protection you can actually rely on, not a bigger claim that means less.
The one limit we will not overstate
There is no product exclusivity, and no honest provider can offer it
Everything above protects a relationship and the information inside it. None of it can fence off a public product, and a provider who tells you otherwise is selling you a claim that fails at the worst possible moment.
What we cannot promise, stated plainly
We cannot promise product exclusivity. Another seller can independently ask us to source the same publicly available product, and doing so is not a breach of your protection. A public listing stays public no matter who requests it.
What is protected is your information: your client’s identity, your negotiated pricing, your supplier work, your volumes and your research. We will not use any of it to build somebody else a competing offer. That is the real, enforceable line, and it is worth more than an exclusivity claim that could never survive a customs form or a competitor placing an identical order.
This is why the approved-claims list marks “nobody else can ever source the same public product” as a claim partners may not make to a client. Say what is true — the client’s identity, pricing and research are protected — and it survives the next question. See the approved-claims list →
Founding partner pilot
Bring the client. The protection is written down before you do.
Apply with your current services, client count, target markets and expected order volume, and we will recommend the path that fits and confirm exactly how registration and non-solicitation apply to it. If you would rather ask first, a person reads every message.
Registered-client protection and non-solicitation apply on Co-Manage, White Label and Strategic accounts. On Refer, the seller you introduce is RyanFulfil’s client by design. The binding terms are in the partner agreement you sign.