business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

, a street date is the date a particular product is to be released for sale to the general public. Typically,

retailers Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler ...

receive shipments of stock prior to its street date release, so that the product can be placed on display shelves for store opening that day. Shipments come marked very clearly with a "do not sell before release date" label designating a street date mandated by the distributor. Shipments may sometimes arrive up to three weeks in advance. Retail outlets can be severely punished by manufacturers for releasing a product even a day before the street date, a process known as "breaking street." One example of this is with the launch of

Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, Inc. (doing business as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment; formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the American home video distribution ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

titles, while the street date was set for March 25, 1997; some retailers sold the format's releases one day earlier on the 24th. If a retailer breaches the

contract A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...

establishing a street date, the manufacturer may impose fines, may withdraw privileges to distribute future products from that manufacturer, and may file a

lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...

to enforce the contract.

References

Business terms Retail processes and techniques {{Business-term-stub