How does this business model work?

[Adam Funk]

I ordered an adapter from a merchant on amazon.co.uk for £3.98 including shipping; it came by Royal Mail 2nd today, & still has the Maplin cardboard tag on the pack! The Maplin price is £5.79.

??

[The Natural Philosopher]

he nicked it?

[Frank Erskine]

Perhaps Maplin have discontinued said ite, and sold off their stock cheap to your merchant.

[Dave Liquorice]

Or bought a pallet of "old stock" or customer returns. Or just shows how over priced Maplin is...

With price of postage, packaging and amazon/other fees I wonder how much actual profit the seller made? £1.00, £1.50?

[Andrew Mawson]

I don't know if Maplin do this, but certainly Argos sell off customer returns by the pallet load by auction. At one time one of my sons had quite a volume of business, buying 'pot luck' pallets and re-selling on eBay individual items.

AWEM

[newshound]

I'm astonished that you can buy things like USB leads on ebay for £2 including postage and a jiffy bag, both from English and Chinese sellers.

[Toby]

£2! you are obviously getting the posh ones!

[Adam Funk]

Their website still shows it in stock.

[Adam Funk]

AFAICT, this was in the original, unopened retail package. I think Maplin puts unopened returns back on the shelf.

I suppose it's probably salvaged --- for example, an undamaged piece from a damaged crate rejected by the recipient of a shipment. WIWAL, one of the big American shipping companies had a salvage store where they sold stuff like that to recoup some of the losses. One of my teachers had a sideline for a while buying damaged copper pipe & taking it to a scrap dealer somewhere else in the area.

[Bill]

In message , Andrew Mawson writes

A lot of their returns, end of line etc. go through one auction centre.

[Nightjar]

If it is a slow moving item, selling off excess stock at cost price might well make sense. Stock costs money to store and ties up capital that could be used elsewhere. Cost price will almost certainly be less than half their selling price.

Colin Bignell

[Lobster]

Is it a one-off item> Contrary to popular belief, Amazon sellers are fundamentally no different to ebay sellers; ie there are plenty who are just ordinary members of the public flogging tat. Maybe your merchant got given a Maplin adapter for Xmas and didn't want it?

[RJH]

As others say - likely bought up surplus stock. But even so, it does bring to mind the mindlessly cheap cost of labour - from producing the thing, right through to the packing and seller admin.

[Frank Erskine]

Agreed. I'm not a smoker, but only a few years ago you would see 5 or

6 cigarette lighters being sold for a quid. Considering the "construction" of these, a container of butane, a gas valve and a ratchet mechanism driving a hardened steel wheel to spark a spring-loaded bit of flint, and the fact that these were (are?) being shipped from China or wherever, then distributed to the barrow-boys who flogged 'em, who no doubt made a bit of profit...

[Andy Burns]

fifty for £5.50 delivered from fleabay.

[Chris J Dixon]

Indeed, I've just bought this DVI D cable for £1.99

Chris

[Andrew May]

But mechanical lighters are a bit odd anyway. They have their own limits for customs declarations and do not come under other goods like most things. IIRC you can only bring upto 200 of them into the country along with your 200 cigarettes and 1.5L of wine.

I have often wondered why this is as I go through customs.

[Nightjar]

FOB prices are around 3p each, although you usually need to buy at least

100,000 to get that. Looking at the employee numbers, range of products and daily outputs claimed by various manufacturers, the process must be highly automated, rather than sweat-shop labour.

A 20ft container will cost about £1,000 from China and you can get a lot of disposable gas lighters in one of those. It may well cost more to distribute them inside the UK than to get them here from China.

Colin Bignell

[stuart noble]

Chris

The Pound Shops sell most leads, but (for the moment) not HDMI. Less than £2 on EBay, and a tenner in Maplins. I fear the latter's days are numbered

[The Natural Philosopher]

he is laundering the cannabis farm money..