Pretty much this.
People have shared how Costco would work with farms and say, “Well pay you less per product, but we’re order a magnitude more than your next buyer. Enough that you can retire next year.”
The numbers are insane.
Boneses@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
I sell locks at my work. We get our stuff through a distributor at a set price discounted from MSRP. We are not large enough to buy direct from manufacturer for these locks. Amazon and home depot are selling the same locks cheaper than we buy them from the distributor because they can buy direct and buy more volume than even our distributor. You would need to buy in volume higher than Amazon which would be difficult because it would require a ton of up front capital which you would not really have a way to make back because you are making no profit. This isn’t the case for everything but it’s particularly bad with residential smart locks.
Anyway to answer the question no it would not drive Amazon’s prices down because at cost we would still be selling them for more than Amazon.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Hello fellow locksmith. We’ve basically given up on selling residential Smart Locks and Padlocks in our shop. For pretty much the same reasons you’ve described. Our prices would be outrageously higher.
Fortunately we deal in car keys, and dealerships still give us plenty of breathing room to beat them on parts, service, and lead times.
Boneses@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
I so desperately want to expand our capabilities on doing car keys but my boss is allergic to spending money. It really seems like a no brainer when the dealerships change an arm and a leg we could easily beat their prices.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Assuming you’ve got a sidewinder cutter it’s worth researching GM’s onboard programming. You can do most vehicles older than 2023 without a programmer.
Boneses@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
Yeah we have a sidewinder cutter and a silca RW4 cloner so we can do on board programming and clone a decent amount of the transponder keys but I want my boss to get a programmer so we can actually do remotes and prox keys because we get people asking about them a lot.