Stationary, I won't mention names but some suppliers of engineering items have quite extraordinary markups, partly because very nearly all of their customers get at least the basic trade discount of 25%, and all of their large customers get much bigger discounts than that. I once bought a tractor slasher cheaply because it had a trashed gearbox. I priced a set of bearings for it, negotiating what seemed like a massive discount, then went to the gearbox manufacturer to price new shafts and gears. The gearbox manufacturer quoted a price, then asked why I didn't just trade in the housing and bolt-set from the trashed gearbox and take a new, identical gearbox instead. His price was far less than my discounted price for the set of bearings alone. Shaking my head in disbelief, I made the deal and was very happy with it subsequently.
On-line sellers are in the process of causing some very large changes in Australia's retail industry.
