Sears to sell Craftsman to Stanley/B&D

[Leon]

Apples, Oranges. To be fair you need to figure 50 cents per mile going to and coming from Sears. That is your personal shipping cost.

[Brewster]

Case in point.

When the fresh roasted green chile runs out and we are Jonesing for a fix, we have occasionally picked up a tub from either the local supermarket or Wal mart. Consistently, the Wal Mart tubs have lots more peels and other undesireables where as the supermarket version is fine.

Tubs look the same (same SKU), but our guess is that undoubtedly Wal Mart demands the manufacturer supply at a lower price, so the manufacturer provides a product that falls down a notch on their QC.

Easy enough to do (for a manufacturer) with foods, a bit more difficult to do with electronics, etc. Given the volume that Wal Mart generates for them, I'd bet that they find a way to modify production to satisfy the Wal Mart contracts and help keep their bottom line.

FWIW

-BR

[Jack]

It was a minor issue with 9600k modems, ended with 14K, and non existent with 56K. The bitch is not about paying for the data, it is annoying to page though meaningless gibberish to see a reply related to one sentence in a message. It was bad form in Fidonet days, and bad form today, for the same reason.

Neither of those things are a concern anymore, since newsgroups

Like I said, that has not been an issue since 14k modems, and is not the issue today.

Nobody but you mentioned data cost/speed issue, that was stupid even in

14k days. It is poor form and annoying to post 50 lines of text and say "agreed" at the end. It is NOT a cost or thru-put issue. You brought up the speed/cost issue, then argued against it. Classic Strawman.

[Jack]

All retailers live by the basic law of economics, which is no customers no business. It is directly where the saying "the customer is always right" comes from. If Sears or Amazon can't make me happy in a competitive market, they will fall. Sears is about toast, as are most local retail outlets. Online will kill off most of them, either today, or tomorrow, but die they will.

Sears makes me unhappy charging 79 cents for a nickle item (shelf bracket) and making me look for a half hour for a salesman. Amazon makes me unhappy charging $26 for a $14 product (Sony earphones). I just noticed Amazon is charging $56 for an $18 chair slide. Do it enough and you will be toast, that's a basic law of economics in a competitive market.

[Jack]

I always knew this. About time you caught on that it is up the the retailer to make me happy and gain my trust if they want to continue doing business with me. If a retailer gets over on me one to many times, I will no longer go to him for my needs. I've lost a ton of trust in Amazon over the years, I still go there, but ALWAYS look around to other places before buying from them.

You say that, but, $28 for a set of Sony headphones plus shipping at Amazon vs $14 and free shipping from Walmart is not a ploy, it was a fact. Amazon added to their "BAD SIDE" ledger on that one, and there seem to be more and more as time goes on. If you followed the post here on Forever wood glides, the price difference was pretty silly, $56 vs $19 for 20 at the tool shop. Unless the tool shop charges $38 for shipping, Amazon is out to lunch again.

Pretty much nothing is manufactured in the US any more, so the above applies to most everything, right?

While Chinese government subsidies may be a factor, the big factor is labor and taxes. Trump wants to fix the tax thing by lowering business tax from 35% to 15% which is more like China. What's he going to do about wages? Nothing, can't be done, so it will have to be tariffs, which means my $14 Sony headphone will cost $100 which means minimum wage will need to go to $35/hr, which means... well, looks grim to me. At least it's a lot easier adding zero's to a computer screen than wheeling around paper in a wheelbarrow to buy something.

[clare]

You would rather he sell everything below cost, and drive HIMSELF out of business? Either way the result is the same.

"I'm only loosing a little bit on each sale - I'll make it up on volume"

[-MIKE-]

I still do it because it gives you an opportunity to bitch about something, which you obviously love doing. Glad I can help.

[clare]

And how do YOU determine it is a nocle item, or a $14 product?, or an $18 chair slide? Just because someone had them on either clearance or as a loss leader does NOT make them only worth that amount.

If the replacement cost to the retailer is more than a nickel he can't sell them for a nickel. Depending on the volume he buys at a time, his price may vary from $0.05 to $0.17 each - then the shipping costs getr devided by yhe number bought, and added to that cost - so if shipping is $10.00 for a minimum order of 100, and the same for up to 500, his shipping cost per unit ranges from 2 cents to 10 cents each for shipping. If he buys 1000 at a time, it's only 1 cent each --

The more he buys, the more his warehousing costs and carrying costs (including opportunity costs) are per unit, which can easily offset the ammortized shipping savings.

By the time that nickel part is sold, if he has an average turnover cycle of 90 days, his total cost will be somewhere between $0.08 and $0.20 cents per unit - and that's not counting retail costs (keeping the lights on, paying the cashier, cleaning staff, heat and AC, etc - nor is it accounting for the "five finger discount" shrinkage due to the "customer" who figures it's fair play becaude he's being "ripped off" for $0.20 for a nickel item.

In many cases, with parts such as those shelf brackets, the "five finger discount" can exceed 30%..

You really need to have some experience on the reseller side, or an education in basic business accounting, to understand that YOUR understanding is WAY off.

So how do the online retailers sell for the price they sell for?? I'll give you an example.

Say ou can buy a brake rotor for your 1004 Taurus, for anywhere from $9 to $30 on a given day from Rock Auto, pluis $7 shipping.

That same part is $39 shop price at Napa, with a $54 MSRP, or as a mechanic your shop price from the Ford Dealer is $57 with a MSRP of, say, $85.

Just pulling numbers out of a hat here, based on past experience.

How does Rock Auto sell for such low prices???

They buy the dead stock off the shelves of bankrupt resellers, and overstock from large warehousing companies who are optimizing their shelf space and minimizing their "opportunity cost" by freeing up cash to buy higher profit and higher turnover parts. They buy the stock for pennies on the dollar. So just because Rock Auto can sell you a Centric brand rotor for $9 does NOT mean that ba Centric brand rotor is only worth $9. Nor does the fact they can sell you a motorcraft rotor for $27 mean the Motorcraft rotor is only worth $27, or that it is worth 3 times as much as a Centric branded rotor.

The actual wholesale value of both may be close to $20, and the "fair retail" may be closer to $55. Your NAPA store may well be paying $35 each quantity 10, and $40 for a single order shipped to their store for a NAPA branded rotor that came off the Centric asswembly line.

[clare]

Please see my last posting.\ And as far as Walmart pricing, you should really try being a supplier to Walmart sometime - you'll find out what being SCREWED really feals like!!!

[notbob]

I stand by what I sed, above.

I jes played a Danelectro/Silvertone, a guitar I gave my friend new high-end strings to re-string it with. He re-strung it, I played it. The strings were worth more than the guitar!

I also read that wiki link of "Danelectro" guitar players. provided. Note that most of the players listed owned Sivertone/Danelectro gear early in their career, much like myself (cheap!). After they started making some $$$$, they rarely touched one, again. (Except fer the "hipsters" that think that "lipstick" pup is all that)

My buddy keeps his cuz it has "sentimental value". That's the only value it has. Again, it's basically junk! ;)

nb

[Leon]

If Sears or Amazon can't make me happy in a

I seriously doubt that your feelings of happiness will affect Sears or Amazon. It will be what the people are looking for that determines failure or not.

Some of the most hated corporations are doing OK. You can enter most any TV content provider, Comcast and most any cellular service.

Sears is about toast, as are most

Some will fail but there is always going to be a great demand for getting the product in your hands right now.

This is nothing new and has been going on for decades.

[Leon]

Any retailer that has a fixed percentage of mark up on his entire inventory is an idiot. Every item must be considered when it come to mark up. You must consider turn over, cost of handling and floor space used. If an item is not selling, you mark it down, and if you have to mark it down too much you don't replace it, unless it is a relative inexpensive item and is a loss leader.

[Leon]

One time use consumables are way different than a product designed to be used for years.

[Mike Marlow]

I just think that all of you guys that cannot snip irrelevant text are just assholes - or something like that,

[-MIKE-]

That's probably the best assessment of the situation, by far. :-D

[Jack]

What if the "locked in price" is from 1999 Email catalog?

(Posted at end of 100 lines of extraneous text to conform to ignorance level of previous poster[s])

[Jack]

Customer doesn't care about _how_ to run an on-line retailing business. On-line and off line retailer must be able to make customers happy, or they are done.

As far as "Inventory, Shipping, Taxes, Dispute resolution, Returns, Sales Taxes, Legal, Finance et cetera et alia." is concerned, it is not much different than off-line retailing. You need to know how to present it to the customer on-line, and I'm more familiar with that than you think.

[Leon]

On 1/17/2017 9:27 AM, Jack wrote: Snip

In another post I indicated that the catalog must be one of the current ones, Winter 2016 or Spring 2017.

Prices often change during a season and or a period that the catalog is still valid.

The changed pricing shows up "on-line" as different than the catalog but if you enter the key catalog number at check out it changes the price back to the catalog price.

[Jack]

I reckon your local orchard supply hardware knows Jack about retail sales. Perhaps your should advise them to drop the boxes as

"It costs the retailer money to stock small items (e.g. those bags of three screws) for packaging, shipping, stocking, tracking."

Myself, I'd like it if HD carried both, just like your local hardware does.

Well they sell a lot to the trades, but, one does not need to be in the "trade" to get pissed about paying 10x more for a product than it's worth. They could offer boxes or 3 packs, and let the customer decide what they need. They have options just like your Orchard has.

Again, your lack of customer experience shows. Customers generally don't like price gouging.

One doesn't need to stick his head in the sand to be happy, well, I don't anyway. Thanks for caring though...

[Jack]

To be fair you need to figure 50 cents per mile going

Nope, I was already going past Sears to HD to get screwed buying 6 tiny machine screws I needed NOW, so the shelf brackets were 79 cents and free shipping at Sears, 5 cents and 20 cents shipping at Amazon. And it's not apples and oranges, it is just apples, exact same item, massive price variance.