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"they're selling at a loss but making it up on volume"



How's that possible?


It's a joke


Economies of scale[1].

A simple example is, imagine making pizzas for your neighbors, and it takes you 15 minutes to make dough for 1 pizza, and at a $10/hr wage, that's $2.50 per pizza in dough labor costs. Now, imagine it only takes you 20 minutes to make dough for 5 pizzas. That's $3.33 in dough labor costs for 5 pizzas, or $.66/ea.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale


You should read catch-22.


What in the world does catch-22 have to do with economies of scale, and why the down-vote (if that was you)?


Milo Minderbinder immediately came to mind for me too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder


It's a quote from the book and no it wasn't me.


Right, but that only means you generate less revenue while selling at a loss.


No. It means that at the 5 pizza scale, if you're selling your pizzas at $5 (assuming $3.00 ingredient and labor costs other than dough), rather than a $.50 loss per pizza ($5.00 - $3.00 - $2.50), you're now making a $1.34 profit per pizza ($5.00 - $3.00 - $.66).


But the stated premise is that they're selling at a loss. Economies of scale don't permit you to generate profit while selling at a loss.


The point of an economy of scale is that, once reached, it can lower costs (think quantity discounts), which means what was a loss at lower quantities can become a profitable business.




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