Which is why I only ever buy disposable razors - four bucks for a dozen Bics, which will last me quite a long time, compared to $10 or $12 for a half-dozen (if even that) Gillettes.
My brother ran a copy shop until recently and is in the process of making his own name in the game. He said that many shops in the Santa Barbara area charge 95 cents for a color copy, which is about an 18 fold increase in the actual cost of the copy these days. Admittedly, they have to hid the cost of the rent, utilites, labor, taxes, copier, toner in that price, but he says it’s still about that markup. They are resting on the perception from years ago that color copies are going to be expensive, and the truth is that most people don’t need that many (not hundreds), and they sort of don’t notice the cost. There are shops who are undercutting this by orders of magnitude and greater, but he says that the expensive shops are still getting away with it.
My RN mother used to bring me half liters of saline that couldn’t be used for other CCU patients. I never had any trouble using it for my contacts. Win!
Ah, but as my industrial engineer father was fond of pointing out, the market is small, and the design and tooling cost something.
Show him a pair of Chinese sandals for $.99 in 1980, though, and he’d go through the roof. “The design is nothing and that’s 20 cents of rubber and plastic!”
Well it’s not that the ticket is a “loss leader”, but that most of the ticket sale price goes back to the studio/distributor. They are the ones that made the movie so they get the money. The theater is just a middleman.
A wealthy lady visits the most famous hat maker in New York and tells him she must simply have a stunning hat for the grand gala tonight.
The hat maker pulls out a ribbon from under the counter and does a few twists and voila, he has turned it into a stunning hat.
“Perfect!”. The lady grabs it immediately. “How much is it?”
“Five thousand dollars” the hat maker replies.
“Five thousand dollars!” the lady exclaims, “but, it’s just a ribbon!”
“Oh no, no, no” the hat maker says while deftly unwinding the ribbon. “For you, Madam, the ribbon is free”
Flawless CVD diamond can be manufactured for c. $2-3 per carat (IIRC) and can be manufactured to size. Compared to the value of a ‘natural’ diamond of equal grade, a 50 carat example could make a percentage markup numbering in the millions, though in reality their retail value will be a smaller fraction of that.
Surely in the future it will be a carbon offset. They are just made up out of thin air.
How about a letter from the bank saying you went overdrawn?
In the UK this can be £30 or more, you still pay the overdraft, you pay interest charges on the amount of overdraft, the cost of a letter, maybe 20 pence and since this types of billing is literally all automated except for the walk up your drive by the postman, there is virtually no staff cost either.
I don’t believe tat is true. For cameras, the markup (in pct) was less for a Nikon than it was for a low-end camera. If youthink about it, it makes sense. A Nikon and an a cheap digital take up the same amount of space. In order to make it worthwhile you may need a 100% markup on a $60 camera, On the other hand you can still make a good deal of money sellng a $1,000 camera with a 30% markup.
It generally comes down to how much space it takes up, how quickly it sells, and the amount of labor involved in selling it. Cars have remarkably low markups compared to the impulse items you find at the checkout lines.