Weird info on PB shipping label

[Gus]

Just received my 12" PB from Apple yesterday. Apparently they are all shipping from Taiwan.

The funny thing is this: There is a lot of info on this label. For example, the name of the man that shipped it is "Mr. Sung" from "Apple Inc., 18 Pei Yuan Rd., Taipei, TW". It apparently has a "Phone Number:**********". (The **'s are real numbers on the box).

Here;s the real interesting part. It says that the "Customer Value" (shipper's value) is "$981.61".

If that's true, then Apple is DEFINITELY making a killing off of the 12 PB.

$1599-$981.61=$617.39 per machine, give or take.

Just thought it was interesting to have so much info on the label from Apple. There are, of course, about 3 different labels on the box from customs, etc., but that was the interesting one.

Regards,
Gus

 

[sonofslim]

Unless the $981.61 is in Hong Kong dollars -- in which case your Mac is worth about $125US. I'd make sure it's not full of rich milk chocolate instead of microchips if I were you.

Odd, though, that they'd put that value on the shipping label. I used to work in an antiquarian book shop; overseas stores would buy from us on behalf of their customers, and we'd ship directly to the end customer. In the process, we'd remove all references to our price and, on the shipping label, indicate the foreign shop's price with markup. That way the customer would see the price they paid, not the original lower (sometimes much lower price.

Seems to me it's bad business to publicize your markup -- if that is, in fact, what that number reflects.

 

[slowtreme]

One Word

Customs

To ship electronics via customs you must label product with specifics about what is contained and the value of the item. there may also be a tariff, in which you would want to "lower" the value of the item to pay LESS tax.

 

[alxths]

Also consider that price doesn't include the amount of money that went into developing the powerbooks... Considering what they've managed to cram into that 1.18 inch thick box, I'd expect development costs to be relatively high.

 

[Gus]

Yes, the R&D would have been high, however, this is basically the same 12" PB as the last with a few performance tweaks. I'm not saying anything bad about the machine or Apple, just that they are getting GREAT margins on the machine.

Regards,
Gus

 

[Makosuke]

Originally posted by Gus
I'm not saying anything bad about the machine or Apple, just that they are getting GREAT margins on the machine.

I'm not any sort of retail expert, but I'm still not entirely sure that those are great margins. The margin between manufacturing cost and end-price sound pretty good, but even putting development costs aside, that's not counting the cost of bundled software (things like Graphic Converter, which can't be free, and the OS), overhead costs for the store (and Apple as a whole), various taxes (could be significant), and other similar things.

In fact, I'd be surprised if their manufacturing margins weren't at least that high.

Of course, it's also possible that that number isn't even "technically" correct (for tarrif reasons)--it doesn't take into account the price of processors Apple shipped directly to the manufacturer, for example, or some other technicality.

Just some thoughts.

 

[baby duck monge]

that is really not very much markup when you consider what goes into making apple computers... and what markup can be in other retail sectors. in places i have worked, markup has been anywhere from 75% to 400+%.

just something to think about.

weird that you got all that information from a label, though. i think you should call the guy whos number you got and discuss markup and label information

 

[LimeLite]

Wouldn't the cost of R&D be factored into the wholesale price of the computer itself? 981.61 is quite possible the insurance price, the worth of the product. How much it would cost to replace the unit if lost. If that's the case, the wholesale value *should* include R&D costs as well as any other costs. Which means they're making a pure $617.39 of profit, which I think is about right, because I remember hearing that Apple makes about 40% off of their computers.