Help with Rap and pricing for companies

[ilzho]

Hello:

I work for a big retailer and have a question about purchasing diamonds via Rap.

I am not in the jewelry division, but in another facet of the company at their HQ.

Our jewelry buyers are using Rap as a baseline to purchase diamond jewelry from vendors/designers at 'wholesale'.

I am trying to inform them that the 'Rap' sheet is a hypothetical pricing and it should not be used for a company to purchase large lots of diamond rings, earrings, etc..

I am not in that division of the company, so my concerns do not go very far with them.

Bottom line is that our buyers are paying rap prices.

Does anyone have any insight to what companies should be paying for diamond jewelry when it is compared to rap?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[denverappraiser]

The problem with large corporate deals is that there's way more to the deal than price. There's the payment terms for example. There's the return policy or a 'swap out' sort of policy where things that don't sell get sent back as a credit towards the next purchase. You mentioned that the product is jewelry, which includes labor, metal, IP and other variables. There's bunches of other 'free' sweeteners that aren't actually free. It's not at all unusual for large corporate buyers to pay MORE at 'wholesale' than consumers pay here at retail. I agree that Rap is sort of an odd and not very effective way to price things but it's their choice. Frankly, I would suggest you stay out of it. There's big time office politics in this sort of stuff.