how do you deal with being the middle man

hello BHW.

Question for all wholesalers and importers.

Say you have a good hookup for a product to import to your country.

So you import the product, have success and sell a few and now it looks like you have something profitable.

How do you deal with new customers finding out the manufacturer of your product through google or something and going straight to them to buy thus cutting you and your middleman profits out

pretty sure thats just the nature of the business. try to keep all sources secret, no giving them boxing material with shipping address etc, but you cant stop them from doing there own research.