Some retail has a 75%+ markup as standard at the store. That's why they're able to regularly offer sales where they take 25%, 50%, even 75% off: it's no

Some retail has a 75%+ markup as standard at the store. That's why they're able to regularly offer sales where they take 25%, 50%, even 75% off: it's not just to clear out unsold inventory; many retailers that do this are still making a profit at those prices. But how many of those items actually sell at the sticker price? The reason I ask is because I've noticed this with mechanical watches (which I have a moderate interest in). Mechanical watches will often have absurd sticker prices. Two, or even three times the final sale price is quite common. But do any of those watches actually sell at those prices? Does anyone actually spend a thousand dollars for, e.g. a Hamilton automatic which has a selling price of roughly $400 on Amazon, and elsewhere? I very much doubt it. The sticker price is just there to add prestige and the sale price, for all intents and purposes, is the actual price. Similarly, clothing often has some ridiculous sticker price, because the entire point of the sticker price is to be marked down in one of the seemingly perpetual sales that retailers have. I remember that J.C. Penney, when they hired Apple head of retail Ron Johnson, tried to change this practice, by setting the list price of clothing closer to the price that they paid, eschewing having sales. It was a disaster [1]. Customers had become accustomed to seeing large markdowns, and when those markdowns weren't there, they waited (or shopped at other retailers which continued to offer markdowns). Just because the sticker price has a 75% (or 2-300%, in the case of watches) markup doesn't mean the retailer actually expects to make that margin on anything except a small fraction of sales. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/02/24/a-strategic-mistake-that-still-haunts-jc-penney/?sh=51861dc61bcf https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/02/24/a...