Volume Pricing
I was toying with making some custom playing
cards, either for a new game (everybody likes card games, right?) or to include
as a freebie with Eric's
Ultimate Solitaire . I found a printer who makes 'em
. The quality is fine and the prices are
reasonable.
But check out their price list:
At a casual glance, it looks like prices drop in a semi-reasonable way as the quantities go up, but as a game designer, I look for the optimal quantities, and discover some weird things about those prices.
The first 500 decks are about $4 per deck. The second 500 drops to only 78 cents per deck. The second thousand goes up to a dollar-fifty per deck. The third thousand drops to 66 cents. Then it gets really weird -- the two thousand decks between 3000 and 5000 cost negative 56 cents per deck -- they pay you to take more decks. It costs a total of $6000 for 3000 decks, or $5000 for 5000 decks. Guess how many I'll get.
This sort of thing actually isn't all that unusual. I've seen the same thing with book printers, CD manufactures, floppy disk duplicators, and milk at the grocery store.
But check out their price list:
At a casual glance, it looks like prices drop in a semi-reasonable way as the quantities go up, but as a game designer, I look for the optimal quantities, and discover some weird things about those prices.
The first 500 decks are about $4 per deck. The second 500 drops to only 78 cents per deck. The second thousand goes up to a dollar-fifty per deck. The third thousand drops to 66 cents. Then it gets really weird -- the two thousand decks between 3000 and 5000 cost negative 56 cents per deck -- they pay you to take more decks. It costs a total of $6000 for 3000 decks, or $5000 for 5000 decks. Guess how many I'll get.
This sort of thing actually isn't all that unusual. I've seen the same thing with book printers, CD manufactures, floppy disk duplicators, and milk at the grocery store.
Filed Tue - October 3, 2006, 10:43 AM in
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