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Comment by sva_ | Hacker News Reader

> It's 101 that wholesale buyers order by the case and for producers to specify the casecount and price,

Not sure why you're being downvoted because thats standard in wolesale. Not sure how they couldn't catch that when looking at the price either.

Maybe they thought they'd sell a lot less for the same price and aren't talking about this?

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Reading their description, there is no real point in which anyone takes real ownership of this mistake and so something like this is probably likely to catch them again.

Did the consultant drop the ball? Yes, but so did they, in a pretty big way.

Still, I've run businesses and when you're trying to bootstrap without experience this kind of thing does happen.

If you are unsure to what extent you can or cannot depend on the consultant, you might as well do all the work yourself at that point. They cannot add value to the process; they could have not paid the consultant and worked directly with the grocery distributor.

The addition of the consultant led to a delegative mindset ("I'm paying someone to handle that problem") that ultimately didn't pan out for them.

>The addition of the consultant led to a delegative mindset

That's it right there. I've rarely, if ever, seen that work out well honestly. The consultant has no real skin in the game and so you still always should be doing your due-diligence. They're there to help rapidly guide you to competency, but they won't do that work for you, you really need to be an active participant.

I like this line of thinking; if you're already down to that level of granularity, a consultant won't help you.

I don't understand either.

They sell for 50% off right now for 42 a case, meaning normal price was 84. 84 × 6000 = 504 000

This doesn't add up with the 250k they were hoping for and the 50% off. Or am I wrong? (too bad they only have decaf yet, wouldn't have minded to try.)

Assumigly, they're offering I'm the coffee for 50% retail price. Sounds like that would put everything in line with standard grocery store markups.

https://bellwethercoffee.com/blog/how-to-start-selling-whole....

ah so that makes sense

Wholesale is usually 50% or less of retail price.

Any retailer hopes to make 30%. 50% would be pretty incredible.

Go get a product put in a big box and let me know what % margin you are keeping

Amazon routinely takes over 30%, especially if FBA.

The confusion here is that different types of items have different margins. but grocery is typically 30%, as is hardware / lumber. However coffee itself might be a profit center for grocery stores, and they might make a bit higher on it. Items like gifts are 50-55%, and clothes more like 70% markup.

Normal retail price. They were probably hoping to wholesale it for 42 per case, which is what they’re selling it for now.

Yeah so begging for help and everyone shows up to help but they’re still trying to take profit on the entire thing. Honestly nice work, They pulled it off. If I were in that position I would have cut the price to the bare COGs. Feels wrong to beg for help while secretly profiting off your rescuers.

Respectfully, people getting a "50% off retail value" deal on a product are not what most would simply call "rescuers". They are people who got a stellar deal and maybe got a good feel or two that they wouldn't normally have

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