This year I learned that life can be wild. In 2020 we saw the world move upside down and because of that in 2021, I am now in charge of changing how our work buys our office items. Do you ever really stop to think about how cheap some items can be at a store? I have found so many sad and pathetic items in our work closets that I am sad anyone ever purchased them. I mean, think about a roll of tape. Someplace, somewhere had to create machinery to self-roll yards and yards of adhesive, see-through tape (because let’s be honest, no one rolls that stuff by hand). That takes money. And the material itself? It takes money. Shipping it to stores? Money. So why is it that you can get a roll of tape for under a dollar? If it takes 5 times the amount to use that tape then why not spend a little more and actually save money. After all it takes to get the materials, make it, and ship it to a store (only to be sold for a little bit more than the supplier sold it for, too!), how does it only cost a buck or less? I have been learning how to save money by buying more expensive items and our budget has been sliced in half.
So let's not get caught up in what everyone else is doing. So many people just fail every single day when it comes to buying the correct items that they are not worth listening to or trusting. Well, I think part of it is how high the demand is for packaging supplies and other general supplies like this. Think about it. Customers in stores like us regular people aren’t the main consumers of tape, cardboard, sharpies, and other packaging supplies. No, businesses are the main consumers and the types of people that these companies target. Why? Because every business can use all sorts of supplies and always have the budget for that sort of stuff.
Now I want to get down to the important parts that may help so, when you take into account just how many people and businesses out there use and need these sorts of supplies, you start to realize it’s just as large or even larger than the population of whatever country you start to think of. So, sure, it may cost less than a dollar for a roll of tape, but if a company can expect a single person to buy 5 rolls of tape per year, that’s almost 5 bucks they got out of a person in a year. Now multiply that by millions and it starts to make sense in the grand scheme of things. It is a huge system and you don't need to get caught up in that old system.
