R Ball posted his woes over a bad customer. I'm looking for some advice regarding one of mine.

I have a problem much bigger than an individual customer or small dealer. This guy has become a significant part of my brand. He doesn't speak English any better than google translate though.

An international distributor I've worked with for 3 years now has done phenomenal things with growing our brand overseas, but every year there's a problem with the payment. This year, he got his order in just after the deadline. It would have accounted for a significant portion of our annual sales. He's now 90 days past due on his deposit. I've been forced to take on work in it's place. The problem is, that work only fills the gaps, it doesn't grow my brand. It also makes it virtually impossible to fill his order should he ever decide to pay. So, here's the dilemma.

It's too late to find another vendor in the same region for this season and may even prove difficult in the future.

If he pays, do I hire extra help to fill the order during a time that it could prove counter productive to my US orders. If I do how much should I penalize him for his behavior? If there is no penalty, he'll definitely take the attitude that "they filled the order last year on my time frame, they can do it again."

My concern with not filling the order is the damage it will do to our image in that market. I have no doubt that he will blame us for not filling the order rather than taking responsibility for his actions, further damaging our reputation. Anyone wanting our product will be told "They couldn't deliver any boards this year."

I could start filling orders direct to this country as I did in the past, but ultimately that hurts our ability to find a new distributor as they want exclusivity. Selling direct also gives the customer a false idea of the cost because they never understand the cost of importing until they've paid the import duties. This hurts a new distributors ability to win customers who think they could have got it for less if they were able to order direct, which in reality is false.

Any advice? I could probably go on and on about the pros and cons of different scenarios, but don't want to bore you guys. Tell me what you would do.