For instance, take this Mechanical Pencil set. You get 6 pencils, an eraser and a refill pack of 30 leads, all for $2 retail. That’s $1.78 before sales tax. Now I’m no expert on industry margins, but I imagine the $2 Shop national buyer probably paid the Chinese manufacturer about $0.95 (plus shipping), so the manufacturer probably made them for $0.70. Take out the eraser, refills and packaging, that means each pencil probably cost about 9 cents (US 6 cents) each, to manufacture. You can use other retail and manufacturing margins to produce other figures, but which ever way you look at it, they were manufactured for staggeringly small amounts of money. I know the design of these pencils is ultra basic, the quality is questionable, the leads are very weak, etc but still, I really struggle to get my head around it.Then there is the power and value of a brand, as you can get this similar mechanical pencil for
NZ$2 with “Winnie The Pooh” branding. So, 6 generic pencils plus eraser and refill leads OR one loose open stock "Winnie The Pooh" pencil for $2, making old Pooh worth something like an extra 600% mark-up. That is perhaps appropriate given that Pooh is one of the worlds most famous pencil persons. After all, the English system of lead hardness grading was invented for him. Pencils are marked B for “Bear”, HB for “Helping Bear”, BB for “Brave Bear” and so on – well at least that’s what he thinks.Economics is a strange and wonderful thing. Perhaps the “Catch 22” variety is at work here. I’m sure we all know the massive mark-up we pay for name brand items, particularly expensive name brands, but when you sit down and analyse it, it’s just mind-boggling.
Footnote: Original drafts of this posting created with Woodchucks excellent California Cedar Products “Forest Choice” woodcase pencil, a mighty fine piece of wood in any economic system.
Posts
2 comments:
Hi Dave and thanks in advance for your helpful blog!
Despite of edge and commercial deal, it is not so easy to find a good price the 1.18 mm.
I was wondering, and this question because I really love the vintage pencil, can I use 0.9 mmm with the above pencil? my concern is 0.9 mm would be too thin and I better be off.
I hope I am wrong.
Again, thank you Dave and I look forward to your positive response.
Cordially,
Guido
Hello Guido.
Perhaps you wrote your comment on the wrong blog posting? There are no 1.18mm pencils in this particular blog post.
Yes, 1.18mm lead is usually much harder to buy, and more expensive than 0.9mm lead.
0.9mm lead would not normally be usable in a 1.18mm lead pencil. It would be too thin and not fit in the mechanism.
Post a Comment