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Being Cheap Vs. Being Inconvenienced? ( Guess This Is Too Much For Garage Journal Too)

Company I used to work for decided that instead of building the best product with a good profit margin they’d rather be #1 in market share with less of a profit margin by continually “making the product more competitive” (read: cheaper and less reliable). Captured #1 in sales, but never saw profit margins at the same level. Went from a debt-free company to needing a 100 million dollar loan to stay afloat a couple of years ago (pre-‘rona). I said for years that Cadillac, Lexus, and Audi make more money per unit than Chevrolet, Toyota, and VW does. If you want to make a ‘cheaper product’ give it its own brand and make both. Don’t cheapen up your Cadillac brand (see: Cadillac Cimmaron).
I had a partner who completely fucked our endeavor by employing a monetary shelf density policy. One of our vendors we sold to told him their number one moving products were in the sub 100 dollar range. He took that to mean that we should not make and sell any item that sold for more on the retail side and all of our higher cost items which were also larger had to go. He became utterly fascinated with the concept of stacking as much small low dollar product on the shelves as possible. The giant glaring problem is that isn't what we set out to do. We were not ever going to be the little gadget company and it did fail, quite expectedly.
 
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