Economies of scale are one of the central themes in any economic process. As per its definition available on Wikipedia, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to size, output, or scale of operation, with cost per unit of output generally decreasing with increasing scale as fixed costs are spread out over more units of output. Simply put, up until a certain production amount is reached, the higher the output, the lesser is the cost of creating that output. This is true for almost all items, be it goods or services. In the case of bulk buying, this economic concept is of paramount importance. In the case of goods’ manufacture, the fabrication of goods requires planning and preparation of various dies, tools and other paraphernalia. The construction costs for these items need to be spread over plenty of output items, failing which the final output price will require loading in order to recover the invested amounts. A case in point is a printing shop. Such shops require a large number of stationery items, ranging from printing paper to printing inks and printer spares. By gauging the market and the requirements, the shop owner has to order various items in bulk. In the case of bulk buying, the shop owner will get discounts on the purchase of the different items as the focus will shift from the purchases being of retail nature to having a wholesale characteristic. In the case of the latter, the wholesalers will offload most of their discounts onto their customers. By strategic tie-ups with such wholesalers, the shop owner can stock up on all essential items and avoid paying retail valuations for most of the purchases. This achieves the perfect balance between the budgeted expenses and actual incurred costs. The utility of such bulk purchases has to be in line with the requirements. Initial planning is required for assessing the market conditions. The bulk purchases have to be in line with the market status and the requirements. This is essential to avoid overstocking of items, which leads to wastage of storage space as well as blocking of funds in these purchases. All in all, with proper planning and doing a strategized market assessment, bulk buying can prove to be a boon in these tough times.
Leave a Reply