Do you ever really stop to think about how cheap some items can be at a store? I mean, think about a roll of tape. Some place, somewhere had to create machinery to self-roll yards and yards of adhesive, see-through tape (because let’s be honest, no one rolls that stuff by hand). That takes money. And the material itself? It takes money. Shipping it to stores? Money.
So why is it that you can get a roll of tape for under a dollar? After all it takes to get the materials, make it, and ship it to a store (only to be sold for a little bit more than the supplier sold it for, too!), how does it only cost a buck or less?
Well, I think part of it is how high the demand is for packaging supplies and other general supplies like this. Think about it. Customers in stores like us regular people aren’t the main consumers of tape, cardboard, sharpies, and other packaging supplies. No, businesses are the main consumers and the types of people that these companies target. Why? Because every business can use all sorts of supplies and always have the budget for that sort of stuff.
So, when you take into account just how many people and businesses out there use and need these sorts of supplies, you start to realize it’s just as large or even larger than the population of whatever country you start to think of. So, sure, it may cost less than a dollar for a roll of tape, but if a company can expect a single person to buy 5 rolls of tape per year, that’s almost 5 bucks they got out of a person in a year. Now multiply that by millions and it starts to make sense in the grand scheme of things.
This is just one of those things that requires some attention paid to the larger picture. Too often we think of stuff and how it affects and relates to our immediate lives and attention span. That simply isn’t how the world works. So, it’s only natural that commerce functions on a larger scale than what we merely see in stores. By giving these things a few moments thought, it all starts to piece itself together and make sense as to why something could be so cheap as a single roll of tape really is.