I appreciate those that have spoke up in Fortress's defense. Turrml, again I'm sorry that you feel the way you do, but at no point was confidential information given to a competitor of yours. Here are the facts:

1. A longstanding dealer requests a quote it goes through several rounds of revisions.

2. We get contacted by Turrml (who is not a Fortress dealer) and he requests a quote and names the exact specification that our dealer has been working on, even names the leather color. We don't have our leather choices online, so the only way he has this information is if someone has given it to him.

3. We realize his request has already been quoted, so I contact our dealer and let him a know that another AV company has requested the exact same quote, and ask them if they mind if we open up Turrml as a new dealer, if they aren't ok with that I also suggest we can either have this AV company contact them and buy through them, or not open them up at all. Our dealer prefers we don't open them up as they've already done a fair amount of legwork on this quote. I understand where they are coming.

4. Before I have a chance to call Turrml back and let him know that we won't be able to open him up as a dealer at this time he's called back upset about the situation. I try to explain to Turrml that we as a company do what we can to protect our existing dealers, that there are often times a dealer has quoted a job and the interior designer contacts us to try and open an account and we protect the existing dealer and refer the designer back to them. I also know on numerous occasions that we have lost sales protecting a dealer, because the designer wasn't able to open an account with us and so they steered the customer in another direction. We understand this risk, but want to have the reputation in the industry that we will do what we can to protect our existing dealer, and not open up just any anyone who contacts us. I'd think most audio video companies and most people would respect that.

At no point was anything specific shared with either company, so I don't know what confidential information Turrml is referring to, while in fact he is the one that has the information on the quote from our existing dealer, so that point is a bit baffling. In retrospect, I wish I had just recognized Turrml request and made the decision right then and there that we won't be able to open him up as a dealer at this time. Obviously it would've avoided this situation. We as a company pride ourselves on having a good reputation in the industry. The steps we did were done to protect our existing relationships, it certainly wasn't done to upset a potential dealer, and I'd think everyone if they were in this situation would want this same courtesy.