|
In all seriousness though, I know the fault doesn't really lie with local retailers. They have to apply a certain markup in order to cover their costs, which is on top of the markup applied by the wholesalers, importers, and GST.
It's really hard to be in retail, I know this because one of my first jobs was as a milkman, back when direct household delivery of milk was still a thing. Supermarkets would regularly sell milk retail for less than the wholesale price which I paid, and they could cover their costs on razor thin (or negative) milk margins because customers bought other things while they were there. It sucked, but at the end of the day I accepted that the people in my area did not owe me a living, that I was not a charity and the only way to run the business profitably would be to compete based on convenience (direct deliveries to the doorsteps, or sometimes the kitchen fridges of often immobile elderly customers), range (being able to get in any yoghurt flavour when the shops refused to carry anything but strawberry and vanilla for example!) or whatever.
I could feel sorry for the people in retail, but if they're losing money because they can't compete with discount Internet retailers, then maybe they need to examine their business models and find other income streams.
|