Found this on Digg.com
Article link from digg.com-------------------------------
Ever wonder why gadget store employees push Monster cables like they're crack? Bitchin' markups, just like you suspected all along. That's what we found when a Radio Shack employee sent us his store's entire inventory list, which included the wholesale and retail price of every item in stock
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The headline gets it wrong. The percentage markup isn't an issue. An 80% markup is utterly ordinary.
It's just the wholesale price is too high, and there's no performance benefit. The article eventually says this too.
An 80% markup is nothing when it comes to cables. Several hundred percent is more like it, especially when you're talking computer cables. I happen to know that SCSI cables cost somewhere between $2-5 wholesale, but anywhere from $50-80 (or more!) retail.
Just looked at the article. Those wholesale prices are obscene.
What’s true a RS is even worse at the big boxes. I worked at a Futureshop (Canadian Best Buy) over one xmas when I was in school, and couldn't believe the mark-up (100-400% or more). The next time you’re at B-Buy/Futureshop, follow the ‘product expert’ back to those 1980s computer terminals they use. Somewhere around the retail price at the bottom of the screen is their cost price (they take the decimal out, so 600 would be $6.00, etc.). I remember a $40 set of component cables costing about $8.
Commissioned sales staff (futureshop) push Monster like crack because they get a huge commission off them. Five years ago, you could make $10-20 selling a DVI cable (cutting edge at the time), and $0.50-3.00 on the DVD player to go with it…
If you think you can actually hear/see the difference and you’ve got money to burn, then go for it. For the rest of us, there’s monoprice…
Funny thing, in the 70s the standard retail markup on anything was in the range of 300%.
Next time you complain about how useless all those sales people in the big box stores are, take a moment to think about shrinking margins in retail and its implications.
You get what you pay for. Low margins = low commisions/wages = sales people who don't have a clue. While there is more to it than that, its a big part of the equation
Either way, monster cables offer no value to the informed consumer
Fred