Tomorrow is my wife’s birthday, and it’s a significant round-numbered one. I bought her a piece of jewelry. I think it’s the first since a diamond ring 17 years ago. So I’m not really an expert in the field. But I was just stunned at how the pricing works on these things. First you have the retail price. Then there was a 60% off sale. According to my wife who’s been tracking this thing, this store (Kohl’s) almost always has a sale going on. And then we get in the mail a coupon for an extra 30% off on all purchases this week. So I paid 28% of retail price. And the clerk didn’t flinch, and it seemed like this was just any old day. I don’t know if this is just the way it is in jewelry, and you should never pay more than 30% of full price. Or if it’s just this store that so inflates the retail price that it appears that you ‘re getting a real steal. But it seems a bit disconcerting to me when prices don’t have any relation to reality.
Perhaps I should set the retail price on my CDs to $742. Then I can offer this discount and that discount and maybe you ‘d feel a whole lot better when the total cost was just a fraction of that.
Speaking of CDs, I’m beginning to release a new set of 8 on Monday. (That’s the one I mentioned as having “5 days left to finish a project I’ve been working on for 5 years.”) If you go to this little link (.), you can be the first to get it. No autographed copies are available, unfortunately. More details in Monday’s BiblePlaces Newsletter (subscribe here).
I was just at Kohl’s today, and I think they really do excessively inflate their prices so as to make it appear that you’re getting a bargain. They really do have a sale almost all the time, with extra mailer coupons if you’re a ‘member’ (which, sadly, I am). I got a blouse for $24 that was marked down from $44 (‘40% off!” said the sign). But for its quality, it was worth about $24. No way it was nice enough to be an actual $44 blouse.
Ah, capitalism!
This reminds me of a few months ago in Tacoma when I went to Albertsons and bought two boxes of cereal. They were already on sale, and I also used two coupons for each box. In the end, they cost about 90 cents each, and I was shocked that they let me get away with that! They’re usually almost $5 each!
I worked a lot of retail over the years and normal markup on most items is about 100%. Jewelry is the exception and the “retail price” markup is between 200-400%. Almost no one buys jewelry for full price. You probably bought your item at about what Kohl paid for it. Good deal for you.