Sharon is consumer savvy. She buys an occasional treasure on an auction website that markets Amazon and Costco returns and other assorted items. She can put a jar of Piney River gravel on one of the many websites that folks peruse……and sell it. I accompany her to her retail outlet, the parking lot at a box store near us, for her MM in deliveries of stuff she decides we no longer need. Put a plaid sport coat and checkered tie on her and she would make a wonderful salesman at Big Al’s Quality car-mart.
As an example of her marketing savvy, I was involved in watching the Chiefs on a bright fall day, sitting on a leather couch we did not particularly like. My game was interrupted by a knock on the door. I hopped up to see what fertilizer service was working the neighborhood on a football Sunday and was met by a well dressed gentleman who announced he was here for a couch that Sharon had sold him an hour or so before his arrival. She had sold the couch out from under me leaving a gap in our living room furnishing and relegating me to a chair I moved into the vacant space.
There is no doubt Sharon has “saved” us a fortune by pedaling stuff that we bought in a moment of weakness or the need for retail gratification. We all do it. When you flip the television on you are bombarded by clever advertising for products ranging from feminine hygiene to shrinking garden hoses. Madison Avenue has devised innumerable, often subtle, colorful, and enticing ads to hawk stuff that Amazon can put on your doorstep tomorrow. I marvel at big pharma’s ability to direct market a plethora of fabulous new drugs that will cause your hair to fall out, teeth to loosen, lose control of your bowels and possibly give you cancer…..but your headache will go away.
There is a caveat to our retail experience. Seldom do we profit. We have mastered the art of buying high and selling low. I doubt that any marketing professor at our political meccas, excuse me, I meant to say universities, teaches this unusual retail tactic. The standing joke when we acquire something new, is to estimate our losses on Facebook Marketplace when we decide we have, again, been duped. So it is. You can go online and have anything delivered to your doorstep from infant formula to caskets for the do it yourself funeral experience. America has become a land of excesses, with a thriving retail experience available at every turn. Be alert for folks like us. We may just have what you think you need and will gladly absorb the normal retail mark up to deliver the product in a Menard’s parking lot at a fraction of the cost new.
As I write, I can report that I still own the nice recliner I am sitting on….at least until the dreaded knock on the door!
Have a great week!
srj641 