Suggestions for purchasing MAP products

[Muto]

@TSellers

Profit on China flashlights? Might be less than you think.

Thanks for that Keith. I agree with your analysis of retail price markup strategies in retail. There are tons of sites where there is information about running a retail business, I did not want to go down that path. All it did was take and actual example of a MAP product that I know about (the $199.95 flashlight), and based my calculations on the known cost of it. As it was only one item from one manufacturer, I agree there could be lots of variations, and feel free to suggest ways to improve on that formula, I’m sure users would be grateful for that. However I don’t recall in my limited experience seeing any MAP flashlights offered with gifts, free speakers, etc. I suspect a lot of people looking for certain items just want a bottom line price, not an additional free pair of speakers, gift certificate, etc. I wanted to keep my formula simple and easy to work with as something you could use to calculate a fair offer price that stands a chance of success. I still think if that method is employed to come up with an offer, it should mostly work, I guess time will tell on that count.

I am sure one of our vendors could explain how thin or thick the margins are or could be much better than me.

That what my friend did over coffee yesterday, and hence I did not have to guess about what the profit is on China Flashligts, and hence the post, done in the hopes it may help out some of my BLF’ers, while at the same time understanding any business for a seller is better than no business.

Right on.
20% of something is better than 100% of nothing any day. All about the Cash Flow baby.

As far as freebies, I don’t know any Flashaholic that wouldn’t mind a nice Quality set of batteries thrown it to sweeten the deal, but a lower price is needed as well to really get you to pull the trigger, especially on the better lights.
From the info gleaned from your friend, it appears that the markup is still around 40 points at MAP, good to know.
Thanks for the inside scoop.

Keith

[TSellers]

That battery idea is a good one, I’ve already passed it along to John who agreed. He said, “That’s a good thing to have in your ”counter-MAPism” toolkit”. Thanks for that, why didn’t I think of that?