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Crazy. I went to Sears this morning to buy a piece of rubber for my mower, called "latch". Holds piece of plastic to mower deck. About 4 inches long with a small metal hook to it.
This piece:
Mower is quite old, part was $5.21, so I said to clerk - hey, check if it's really that expensive, maybe I'll buy two.
She does her thing on computer, and chuckles. Says - you better buy it at this prices, as it just went up to $12.71. Because we didn't update it (it was right after they opened) you can still have it for old price.
That's nothing. When I had my MINI Cooper S they released a TSB about adding extra rubber bumpers to the rear hatch. This small piece of rubber was $23.00 a piece at the good guy discount. How small was it? It was about the size of a pinky tip, just a piece of rubber. Yes I searched else where online but $23 was the going rate. You needed two of them.
One reason that a lot of odd ball things with few sales, have a high price is due to the fact that to stock them, and wait for sales that may take a year or two to sell them, and they are low price, is the cost to stock, and maintain them, space that is used for those items that could be used for other purposes that would be more profitable. This is taken into consideration when pricing items. The wholesaler that furnishes them to the store has the same problem. Things that sell rapidly and give you turn over on your money, have a lot lower sales price than items you have to hold for months or years.
And the shipment of that rubber fastener may have been the last one from an older shipment, and the new shipment took a big jump in price for one reason or another. Probably everyone in the supply chain had raised the price to make it worthwhile to even carry the item due to slow sales. Every time the price went up along the supply chain, the final in the chain the retail store had to raise accordingly. Items like that have to go through many hands before it reaches the consumer. And each is going to use a higher price markup, to compensate for carrying the item for you to buy. If it did not have enough profit to reward the retailer and others in the supply chain on small slow moving items, they simply would not carry the item. Simple as that.
exactly . when i was an electrical wholesaler we had a tiered pricing system . slow moving items fetched a premium price . we have it , they need it, without delay .
there is a price to pay for that item as well as costs for us carrying it without much turnover ..
the longer the delay to get that part the higher the price if we had it .
It's too costly to support old mowers and their parts. So, you will either continue to upgrade to the newest modal, or you will pay a premium to buy an increasingly dwindling supply. For a manufacturer to make a low quantity of an old part it becomes more expensive to produce on a per-unit-basis (less units to spread fixed costs over). Also, the opportunity cost of the shelf space at the store, their production time, ect.
It's cost-volume-profit analysis
Last edited by Thatsright19; 03-26-2016 at 04:52 AM..
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