Celeb Best Blog

Mark ups are the small profit margins that retailers gain when an
item is sold. It is the fundamental of business; it’s the reasons that
the amount we pay is not what the item is actually worth. It’s the small
amount of money the business owner tacks on to cover expenses and
overhead costs such as rent, electricity, heating, etc. But some markups
are quite ridiculous and here are some of the really high ones that
should be avoided.

Here are ten products that most of us use on a weekly basis that have
absurd
markups: some range to over 5000%! If we all band together to stop
buying these ridiculously overpriced products, they will have no choice
but to lower their prices! Read on to save money and join the
anti-markup movement!

10. Cosmetics

The thing that many people forget about makeup is
what it’s made out of. Make up is usually around 80-90% dirt! The other
ingredients usually consist of oil and wax. People pay ridiculous
amounts of money to put dirt on their face! Fragrances are added to make
them smell nice; but it’s still clay or dirt. A couple grams of dirt
will sell in a fancy department store for $20-30. The actual cost of the
product is the cost of walking outside picking up a handful of clay,
grinding it up and adding fragrance and putting it in a little fancy
case. Then it can be sold at a huge markup.

With the proliferation of designer makeup brands and competitive
companies, luxury and name brands of makeup have become popular. The old
adage says: you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig; and
you can put dirt in a fancy jar; but it is still dirt. Consider making
your own makeup at home (it sounds hard, but it’s not). “Recipes” for
creating homemade makeup are everywhere on the internet and can save you
money.

Read more:

http://www.pvsoap.com/mineral_makeup_ingredients.asp

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/fashion/01skin.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2

9. Bottled water

Bottled water; what a ripoff! Someone decided to take one of the
world’s most plentiful resources and cover it with plastic and charge
$3-4 a bottle! Bottled water is commonplace at convenience stores,
beverage machines, and in the cooler at basketball games. But why? When
did we stop drinking from taps and drinking fountains and switch to
polyethylene coated H20? When bottled water splashed onto the market, it
was being marketed as a healthy alternative to soft
drinks.

But it has evolved into an issue of convenience. Instead of using a
reusable bottle, it is now easier to grab a prepackaged disposable
bottle of water and drop it off in the nearest garbage receptacle when
finished with it. But is it any different from tap water? Some companies
market their water as being the “purest” or “cleanest” but in fact, all
water must comply with federal regulations of cleanliness regardless of
whether it is being drunk out of a plastic bottle or from the tap.
Water can usually be attained for free at most places.

Bottled water is a corporate success story; they took a readily
available product (one of the most abundant resources on the planet!)
and packaged it into a popular product that everyone is willing to pay
for. But it hurts the consumer’s wallet; not to mention it’s horrible
for the environment.

Read more:

Fiji
Water Scandal

8. Greeting cards

The markup on a greeting card is around 100-200%; which is pretty
modest considering some of the more vicious markups on other products.
But retailers spend very little money to produce this product, so the
unsold products do not hurt the bottom line as much as say, an unsold
car. Greeting cards are one of the best items to mark up because they
are so cheap, and unsold merchandise does not dramatically affect the
bottom line.

Paper is cheap, but paper with some sappy writing on it is expensive.
It’s a retailer’s dream product! A little piece of paper with some
writing on it that can be sold for three or four bucks. Recently,
electronic greeting cards (also called e-cards) have proliferated and
can be found on the internet for free. On Amazon.com, 20 packs of blank
greeting cards are available at a cost of $10.99 for a cost of 55 cents
per card. Next time you want to save some of that paper in your wallet
when it comes to getting a greeting
card, choose to use your own greeting card! It will be more
meaningful and will cost less.

Read more:

http://www.greetingcard.org/about.php?ID=2

http://www.amazon.com/Hallmark-Blank-Greeting-Half-fold-Premium/dp/B000E5N0MG

7. Mattresses and furniture

Ever notice how mattresses and furniture are always on sale? Well
there’s a reason for that. Furniture salesmen receive a higher
commission if they sell their product at MSRP (manufacturer suggested
retail price); usually a minimum of 20%. If they sell their product at
MAP (minimum advertised price) they receive a minuscule 7% commission.
If you were a salesman, which price would you sell it at? Do your
research and find out what the product is actually worth, then buy it.
Markups range from 200%-400%. Buying an expensive mattress might make
you sleep better right away, but it could leave you tossing
and turning at night in the long run.

The best thing to do to avoid being duped at a furniture store is to
shop around a lot before you make your final decision. There is often a
wide disparity in the price for the same product between two competing
stores; it all depends on the MSRP, the MAP, and the honesty of the
salespeople.

Read more:

http://consumerist.com/2007/09/the-furniture-industry-is-a-secret-cabal.html

http://www.realgoodfurniture.com/furniture-shopping-secrets/

6. Restaurant drinks (wine and soda)

Wine has an astonishing 300-600% markup. If you can forego that glass
of wine
with dinner, your wallet will thank you. What’s even more shocking is
that the average markup is even higher for soda. A 12 ounce glass of
soda costs the restaurant nickels, but it is sold for dollars; and it is
half filled with ice! It’s no secret that you can buy a soda from a
soda machine for between fifty and seventy five cents and that same soda
will cost $2.75 in a restaurant.

Lately there has been talk of adding a hefty tax to soda because it
is unhealthy. So it’s only going to get more expensive. If you’re tired
of whining about wine and sniveling about soda, maybe it’s time to
choose water instead! (But not bottled water!)

Read more:

Overpriced
Drinks & Other Things We Hate

5. Brand name clothing

Brand name clothiers rely on the advertising power of humans as
walking billboards as well as conventional marketing strategies for the
advancement of their products. The cost of looking good rises every year
as more and higher end clothing brands are created. The cost of the
clothes doesn’t change; only the label on the back does, and that’s what
changes the price on the tag. The markup can be 500-1000%, depending on
if it’s an up and coming brand name clothier or an established Italian
sounding name brand.

The trendy
and fashionable know what the price of looking “hip” is, and it is
seldom cheap. Apparently the label is worth paying the extra money,
because high end clothing retailers continue to thrive, even in hard
economic times. The popular names and symbols that are associated with
major clothing companies are hard to escape from, as they are literally
everywhere. People will pay big bucks for “the look,” even if it costs
them an arm and a leg to clothe their arms and legs.

Read more:

http://nbainsidestuff.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/brand-name-shoes-clothing-are-stupid-ripoffs/

4. Jewelry/diamonds

The glittery rocks that cost a fortune are subject to volatile
changes in price and high markups. Although the industry average markup
varies widely, (100% to up to 1000%) it’s probably not a good deal
regardless of where the jewelry
is purchased. Jewelers
thrive on the uneducated buyer, so it is wise to do research before
buying to settle on a good price and product. Ridiculously cheap or
expensive jewelry should raise a red flag because it is probably of
substandard quality. It’s always a good decision to find out what the
same jewelry’s
price is at other stores. That information can be used as a
negotiating tool.

Also, a diamond over
$1000 should come with a certificate certifying its legitimacy from the
Gemological Institute of America. Don’t let these rocks rock your
monthly budget or you may find yourself in the hole.

Read more:

http://www.home-jewelry-business-success-tips.com/jewelry-stores.html

3. Glasses frames

Why A little scrap of metal costs hundreds of dollars is one of
life’s great mysteries. Yet eyeglass wearers continue to get smoked at
the optometrist when they squander huge sums of money for frames that
hardly weigh an ounce. The markup can be as high as 1000%! Consider
perusing the internet for alternatives before spending hundreds of
dollars on frames.

Never buy accessories at optometrist’s offices because they are
heavily marked up. Clip-ons, glasses cases, and other eyeglass
accessories can usually be purchased for a very reasonable price on the internet.
Don’t pay for products at the eye care office before looking over the
internet; or you could end up looking at it in hindsight and regretting
it; and hindsight is 20/20.

Read more:

http://3mew.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/eyeglasses-stores-are-for-suckers/

2. Movie theater popcorn/candy

It’s no secret that popcorn and candy are expensive at the movie
theater. It doesn’t take an Alan Greenspan to deduce that movie theater
popcorn has a high profit to cost margin. Concession sales only make up
about 20% of total sales in movie theaters but make up to 40% of the
average profit. Why? Because movie theaters need to sell overpriced food
to keep ticket prices low. If ticket prices were high, no one would
come in the doors and subsequently spend money on snacks. So the price
of admission is cheap, but the snacks are where movie companies make the
highest profit margin.

So what is the average markup of movie
theater popcorn? 900-1200% according to Richard B. Mckenzie, author of
“Why popcorn costs so much at the movies” and an economics professor at
UC Irvine. Better stick to sneaking your snacks in.

Read more:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1001/gallery.americas_biggest_ripoffs/2.html

1. Prescription Medicine

Prescription medicine tops the list of highest markups. The sky high
cost of prescription medications is crippling the economy of the United
States and keeping necessary medicines out of the hands of those who
need it most; people living on fixed incomes with acute or chronic
health issues.”A bottle of tamoxifen, used to fight breast cancer, costs
$360 in the United States.

It costs $60 in Germany,” according to U.S. House Representative Jo
Ann Emerson of Missouri. Canada and European countries’ prescription
medication prices are regulated by government imposed “ceiling” prices;
essentially a limit on how high the prices can get for medicines. They
also negotiate directly with drug companies. However, no such price
controls exist in the United States and we are paying 200%-5600% markups
on essential medicines such as Prozac and Xanax! These two medicines
are taken long periods of time; for depression
and anxiety disorders respectively, which means that the patients that
use these prescriptions will be shelling out thousands of dollars over
the course of a lifetime to obtain them.

Award winning Detroit reporter Steve Wilson exposed dozens of Detroit
area pharmacies for illegitimate price gouging on the prices of their
generic drugs. They were buying them at rock bottom price and selling
them at an average of 900-1200% markup, depending on the medicine. The
local pharmacies were found selling Vasotec, a blood pressure medication
for $60 when it cost them $6 to buy the generic version. Similar
markups were found at most of the pharmacies in the area; except one.
The solution: Costco wholesalers consistently had the best prices with
mark-ups between 86 and 423%, not 3,000 to 5,000% according to Florida
WFTV reporter Barbara West, who conducted an investigation similar to
Steve Wilson’s. Be wary of the cost of prescription medications when
buying from local pharmacies, as they may be interested in your wealth
instead of your health.