On 2010-12-15 14:16:38 +0000, John Williamson said:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I do wonder about some dealer's mark up, though. I recently bought an
inlet manifold gasket for my old Rover from a Land Rover main dealer -
didn't want to wait for the post. Cost 28 quid. 3 times the price of one
mail order. And probably from the same maker.

Quite possibly, for a part like that.

The main dealer mark up *is* often quite generous. What I found,
though, was that if I bought a pallet load of, say, filters, direct
from the makers, the price was very low per unit, but I had to find
room to store them for anything up to a year, which cost a fair bit.
That's what pushes dealer costs up, well, that and the logo on the high
street door. Their discount on small orders isn't that good, either,
from what I remember.

The postal supplier has a warehouse on a trading estate, so his rent's
lower, and he doesn't have to impress the people walking past, so his
shop's cheaper to set up. He also turns his stock over more quickly,
and often carries a smaller range, so he's not subsidising the slower
selling items with the faster turnover stuff. The extreme with some
postal suppliers is where they have zero stock, and wait for enough
orders to come in so they can buy a batch.

Or they simply contract the manufacturer to drop ship to the customer.
Seems pretty common for larger items.