Comment by programmertote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by programmertote | Hacker News Reader

The worse combo is shrinkflation with significantly increased price. I used to buy Arm and Hammer detergent (250 FL OZ) from Costco for ~$11 about a year ago. Last week, I went to Costco and saw that they have reduced the size of the container (in a very subtle way so it is hard to notice) with 200 FL OZ and charges $14.89. That is like double rip-off.

My salary did not increase 35% between this and last year. For Church & Dwight (Arm and Hammer brand manufacturer) to not only increase the price by at least 35% with shrinkflation, I wonder where the extra profit are going toward.

When I just immigrated 20 years ago, I used to be in awe at the size of commodities and food portions in the US. Nowadays, things are shrinking noticeably and eventually, stuff bought in the US would look just the same in terms of size as what's available in Burma (Myanmar), which is my home country. That observation makes me feel like the US (and probably all of the affluent western nations) is approaching the end of the era of abundance, and life for the future generation would be tougher. Pretty sad/concerning to think about it.

I bought a jar of some new Nutella type spread and while the lid is round, the jar footprint is lozenge shaped.

From the front it looks like a normal jar, from the side I actually started laughing at this skinny little thing with a giant overhanging lid.

I had a similar experience recently. The jar looked the same, but as it turned out they simply used significantly thicker glass to hide the weight difference caused by the reduced content.

> For Church & Dwight (Arm and Hammer brand manufacturer) to not only increase the price by at least 35% with shrinkflation, I wonder where the extra profit are going toward.

That assumes there's extra profits. They also have to pay for materials, labor, etc. which have also gone up recently. Perhaps they're making the same profit (amount or percent) they were 4 years ago at that size/price?

Your question is very legit. I have been researching on that too and the best I found is this: https://finbox.com/NYSE:CHD/explorer/gp_margin

BUT, we don't really know how these gross margins are actually calculated (meaning, the reporting is all done by these corporations with very complicated accounting methodologies). All things considered though, 41.9% gross profit margin for 2022 is still pretty good. With the supply chain easing, I am very curious to see how that profit margin looks like in 2023.

My totally unsubstantiated guess is like this: labor probably got a 10% bump since COVID; raw materials and oil/gas (for transportation) probably also had like 10-20%% bump in total. Then the remaining 5% (from 35% increase in just the price, NOT including the profit from shrinking) is probably going toward the extra coffers of the corporations.

FYI on the detergent point: the new bottle may be more concentrated. I saw this too but when I compared the two bottles closely the dose size was also reduced (and I suppose the detergent more concentred, though hard to verify).

The old one is 195 loads and the new one is *supposedly* 200 loads. I never really paid attention to those load numbers because in the end, I just use the measure cup (that comes with the container).

Thanks for raising this subtle point though. :)

Turns out (in my case) both cups were identical, but the old bottle said to use the B line and the new one said to use the A line.

Clearly I spent far too much time overanalyzing this…

Even worse is the shrinkflation with stealth price increase.

Haagen Dazs recently reduced the size of their ice cream containers from 500ml to 450 ml while keeping the price the same.

Fine. They succumbed to shrinkflation.

But it's only at the checkout counter where you get hit with the stealth price increase.

In Canada, they tax individual items of certain foods but don't tax family-size portions of those foods.

It turns out that 500ml is the limit for family-sized portion of ice cream container. Buying less than 500ml results in the store charging tax on the item (Ontario HST is 13%).

So Haagen Dazs is getting a bit more and the government gets some where before they got nothing.

see https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/shrinkflation-canada-ta...

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