The heavy and/or high-volume stuff usually goes by a container boat. That can get amazingly cheap, if you don’t count the paperwork and load/unload operations and other per-shipment overheads that amortize easily over a large shipment (which, for a large amount of the same goods, is not that much; loading a pallet into a truck takes the same time whether is light or heavy, within reason, same for a 40’ container).
I know that sending about 80 lb of books from the US to Europe was about break-even for air and sea freight (the per-shipment overhead is higher for sea, the per-weight cost is higher for air) and air was easier logistics-wise.
There is also a little-known-outside-the-industry concept for volumetric (also called chargeable) weight. It is a formula that converts shipment’s volume to an “equivalent” weight. For the purpose of charging, the higher value of the vol.wgt and wgt is taken. There are different coefficients for the volume multiplication for uses for air, sea, and road freight; for example, the same 1 m3 has chargeable weight 166 kg for air, 333 kg for road, and 1000 for sea. Calculator here: http://web.trackload.com/en/tools
East-west trans-Pacific sea shipping is generally even cheaper because of all the empty ships returning to China, but however small the costs there is still a cost involved in shipping this stuff, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense that US-made stuff would cost only 35% of the Japanese-made stuff.
It’s interesting that a cube meter of (fresh) water is the chargeable weight for a cubic meter via sea shipment. From eyeballing cargo ships it certainly seems like the volume of cargo containers they carry is much greater than the ship’s displacement.
That actually makes sense. (How could I miss that???)
A lot of the stuff is relatively light; there’s a lot of air in the packaging. There’s also considerable amount of free space in the containers themselves.
Then there’s the issue that you can load fewer containers on the ship than what its full tonnage is, but if you have it loaded with all it can carry, volume-wise, and did not use all the tonnage, you’re underutilizing it and increasing per-unit cost for what you can carry.
I know, but if every shipper used the full chargeable weight, then the ships would have to carry less cargo. This suggests that their chargeable-weight formula could lead to huge inefficiencies if, for example, ball-bearing manufacturers joined up with pillow manufacturers to make sure they perfectly met the chargeable weight.
I would have been surprised if it didn’t exist, given the system you’ve described. Which is why the chargeable-weight formula seems a little strange, since it seems to have the potential to reduce the volume shipped.
I suppose that the carriers simply rely on transaction costs to eliminate shippers from fully taking advantage of this opportunity, but it makes little sense nevertheless.
The carriers do not care that much about individual shipments. They haul weight and volume. You usually go through an intermediary, a freight forwarder, who handles the individual shipments, optionally consolidates them to containers, and optionally handles the customs annoyances for a fee.
The chargeable-weight is there to find a compromise for the cost of the carriage, as there is a limited weight capacity and limited volume capacity; the idea is to get paid for the full carrying capacity (whether you reach the weight or the volume limit) of the vehicle.
Cigarette vending machines used to be fairly universal in the US, until sometime around the 1980s(90s?) when they were mostly banned to keep kids from buying cigarettes, along with Federal laws forbidding retail stores from selling them to anybody who looked like a minor. That significantly cut the cash flow of vending machine service companies.
I don’t know if it’s still there, but there used to be a historical marker in Winston-Salem North Carolina celebrating the place where the cigarette vending machine was invented.
Visited Italy a couple summers ago. There were cigarette machines all over, but all over in a really odd way: Set into the windows of cigarette / convenience stores. There was a lot of security grill-age around the things, so that only the controls and the deliver slot were exposed.
AFAIK price controls on books were eliminated ages ago and I’ve never seen ¥35/can prices on soft drinks or US made Coke in supermarkets, not even in the few that focus on the executive expat allowance market.
As far as large businesses undercutting pricing, thats very common on electronics. Yodobashi, Bic Camera or any of the other large retailers always have better pricing than the smaller chains or mom & pop shops and you get “points” on a loyalty card. There’s even a well known site kakaku.com which lets you price compare on many different goods and services.
My hotel in the Netherlands, just outside of Amsterdam, had a Heineken vending machine, in the usual alcove where you’d normally find an ice maker and soda vending machine. It’s the only such machine I found in Holland.
Similar to the Best Buy machines in airports, many larger Colo Data Centers now have IT vending machines, offering key network components such as USB-to-serial adapters and GBICs.
It never occurred to me before, but we do have a history of these sorts of machines in the U.S.–placed called “automats”. I don’t know much about the history of automats, although according to Wikipedia it was fast-food places that caused them to decline. There’s also a fascinating photo of a contemporary automat in Manhattan.
I also remember a Candid Camera segment in an automat where people would pull out a sandwich only to have it pulled back into the machine by a string. One customer finally yanked hard enough to break the string. That makes me wonder if vandalism can sometimes be explained by machine malfunction. I’m not normally a violent person but paying for something and not getting it brings out the worst in me.
It was in in the middle of nowhere in Wakayama-shi, in a weird kind of discount-supermarket. Not where you would expect to find this stuff, and definitely not an “expat” market in a high-rent district.
Anyway, according to somewhat dated research I’ve seen, it seems that the traditional Japanese system of wholesalers—wherein many wholesalers often deal with only one manufacturer, and provide extensive guidance and advice to retailers—was used to enforce a system of price controls at the retail level, while also providing escalating rebates to the retailers based on sales volume in order to encourage them to sell that manufacturer’s products, and not others.
I believe this sort of soft pricing control still exists, and as I said in the book/DVD/CD sector formalized price controls still seem to exist.
Could also be the premium on space in Japan forcing them to consider instead of full on stores, sell your weird stuff in these steel boxes you service on a regular basis. Far smaller footprint in what is likely a stupidly fantastically expensive to rent area.
Also I think the idea of a networking and computers essentials vending machine would be epic for those often overlooked but needed items (spare 2amp USB wall warts, USB to micros USB chords, iPhone/pad charging cables (regular and lightning,) USB sticks, SD cards, etc.
Stick on the aisles cap of a big box store to keep people from doing a smash and grab, but allow people to get that HDMI or Ethernet cable they need without having to bother someone at the counter to unlock the case.
Slightly off topic but I spent a short time in Dortmund where they had unmanned tanning booths. I remember thinking that they would have been quickly trashed back in my hometown of Glasgow. I did ponder what it was about the Germans that made them respectful of something so easily broken. Maybe , like the Japanese and their vending machines it’s just a cultural thing. I am strangely heartened to hear that New Yorkers also have the desire to smash things up just for the hell of it.
I’m guessing you’re right. I remember having some moments like that as a Brazilian design student in Cologne. For instance, some stores had a bunch of products in racks outside, right on the sidewalk. It seemed like literally less effort to pocket something and walk away than to go all the way to the counter inside to buy the stuff. But I’m guessing people still bought.
In most places you could pass out drunk in back alley and be all but absolutely certain that your belongings will all still be with you when you wake up. This is not a particularly uncommon occurrence.
It’s easy to blame the companies, but there’s a cultural element to it as well… The perceived value of price is a thing that exists most everywhere, but it’s /very/ strong in Japan. Cutting the cost of many products would be seen as admission of lower quality, rather than competition.
Maybe in the go-go '80s, but I think that in the past decade the frugality of shopping at hyaku-ens has become chic in its own right, and decades of deflation have accustomed Japanese consumers to falling prices.
