I spend entirely too much time thinking this through. I’m talking specifically about the little plastic dividers most grocery stores/supermarkets offer to separate your purchases on a checkout conveyor belt from the next customer’s.
Yes, one would cost almost nothing to make. And yes, you can put advertising in it, which means presumably the creator could certainly negate the minimal production and distribution costs and be almost all profit.
BUT, you’re making a product that (from the looks of things) sells for perhaps $2.50, pretty much lasts forever and never even wears out. When a new supermarket opens you MIGHT sell, what, 25? And it would presumably have to be a completely new location, if it’s just a change of brand then it’s conceivable they could “inherit” the previous store’s divider thingies.
I’d think there’s extremely little shoplifting of these, so an inventory is pretty much a one-time purchase.
There aren’t many other retailers who would be in the market for these things… chain hardware stores sometimes have conveyor belt checkouts, but it’s a pretty short list of potential clients.
You do have “first copy costs” as the manufacturer… design, materials, etc.
Why does anyone make these, and do they make any money doing it? If so, how?
I’d guess that they are a special order item, where a plastics extrusion company that makes its living making other things squirts out a few on demand. And the profit margin on orders like this is higher than the profit margin on mainstream products.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices was much higher for the store than it seems. Customers have come to expect them. If you’re opening a store and can’t “inherit” older ones, then you need them.
Also, the first copy costs would be offset by being able to sell to a lot of stores at once, even when you’re just designing an incremental improvement like a model where the store can insert its own advertising tags.
sevenwood hit it in one. They are cranked out on demand by local companies using standard dies. The ones with advertising that I’ve encountered have been paid for and provided by the person/company doing the advertising (in this case a local realtor who is a former student). She provided the market with the dividers and they used them for a contracted period of time, for a negotiated fee.
All I know is that when our Super WalMart opened, they had them. Now they don’t, so apparently over time they were all either stolen, broken or lost, and the store decided they weren’t going to replace them.
I’ve seen many a broken one in a variety of stores. And they seem to migrate from lane to lane - I’ve seen adjacent checkouts - one has none, the other has 3. Who knows - maybe the night shift moves them around to screw with us!
There’s a small local chain (only 3 stores) and their dividers actually look like plastic sticks that they cut to length. Guess they were too cheap to procure real ones.
The ones I’ve seen lately don’t have any branding or advertising. Just a black or cream-colored plastic rectangle about 14" in length.
Looking at Alibaba, you could get them as cheaply as 10¢ for plain ones or 25¢ for fancy ones* if you’re willing to buy a 3,000 piece lot. I suppose a grocery chain just buys them in bulk ($750 for 3,000) and they get ordered from the main office as needed. Independents might wind up paying a couple bucks each but it’s probably not worse than buying staplers or boxes of paperclips when you’re opening a new store.
You don’t make them from scratch using standard dies. You can, for example, buy square plastic tubing from a supplier like McMaster-Carr and cut it to length.
I have my own personalized divider that I bring to the store when I go grocery shopping. Sometimes I have to argue with the checkout person about taking it home with my goods.
Eventually, every cash register on its stand will be pulled away from the rack-of-candies-and-jerky next to the conveyor belt and, lo and behold, the pile of +/- 1500 “lost” dividers will be revealed.
