Manufacturer/Wholesaler/Distributor Margins

[Stevenj214]

Are there any 'rules of thumb' for margins at different levels of a supply chain?

[Dino D]

I think it may be industry dependent?

[Stevenj214]

Manufacturing commodity items with limited added-value. In our case, first aid.

[M-J-B]

Dino D said:

I think it may be industry dependent?

And can vary widely depending on how stupid the competition want to be!

Our margins vary from 45% to over 800% depending on the product!

[BertyBigBongos]

M-J-B said:

Dino D said:

I think it may be industry dependent?

And can vary widely depending on how stupid the competition want to be!

!

Very true!! Ours will vary from 5% to 600% dependant on product.

The quote from dragons den the other week was quite good. ' the cheaper i can get these bits and bobs the cheaper i can make it' or something along those lines.

For us the cost of raw materials has gone up and the cost of importing has risen in most cases. We have hadto absorb a lot of the increases as our customers dont like price increases therefore lowering the margin, but ultimately we can only do this for so long. we lose out on some items but we will compensate on others where the price isnt so sensitive.

Our average margin across 6000 products should work out at about 35%, but we are a volume seller so i would expect different types of companies to work to different margins.

[ben10]

According to Wikipedia last week, Cost-Co don't mark anything up by more than 15%

My parents manufacturing business is running on about 50% gross margin on average.