I certainly don't expect vendors to give their stuff away. But I have noticed a couple of leading vendors jacking up prices in the last few months. Maybe their sales are down or maybe they've gotten greedy. Either way, they've lost me as a buyer. A few weeks back, one of my favorite vendors had a half-price sale on their entire store. When I looked at their items in my wishlist, I realized at half price they were still $7 or $8. I bought nothing. In fact, since the first of the year I've only bought three items and haven't spent $20 yet.

The thing is, I imagine some of the biggest vendors sell in high volume. If they're getting 70%, a popular item priced at $16 would net them $11.20. Sell 500 or 1000 -- and I'm sure some of the biggest names do exactly that much volume or more -- and you're looking at $5000 to $10,000 per item. A couple of items a month and life is good. That, of course is only true of the big names, but they are big names because they produce highly-reliable, high-versatile items that people want.

If I had the talent and patience -- which I don't -- I'd love to be a vendor. I have ideas for items that are needed (IMO) and not available. But, without the requisite talent, I'm at the mercy of vendors. ;-)

 

Doug