Choice: Minimum Wage Or Books

[robertreams]

Interesting that their costs for space are $25-$100/ hr. Maybe they should be looking for a cheaper place?

 

[desertslave]

As with any business, running a book shop requires a unique selling point that separates you from your competition.

With selling NEW books, I think that the only option is to specialise - to be THE place for Manga, or Politics. If you become the country's expert on a particular genre of books then people will come to you, even if your prices are slightly higher, because you have everything they want.

A general New bookshop can only compete against the bigger stores or the internet if they have a client base, such as a university campus.

Secondhand bookshops do not suffer from the publisher's restrictions on sale prices and mark-up, but again they need at least one unique selling point. Mine were price and knowledge. I was cheaper than the local charity shops for basic paperbacks. Sometimes when I wanted to get rid of surplus stock that the charity shops sent for recycling I would price books as low as five pence each, or even one penny. If I said 'free', people wouldn't take them, but they would buy at one penny.

Staff costs are significant to most businesses, but if all your competitors have the same cost base, then an increase in wages would not decide whether you sink or swim. The survival of the business depends on the market in which it exists. Get it wrong - you fail. Get it right - you survive. Find the Holy Grail and become the best - you thrive and expand.

We have a lovely bookshop in Scottsdale that is alive and thriving because its focus is mysteries and thrillers. It's called The Poisoned Pen. They have a great newsletter to keep readers informed of upcoming releases, and bring in several authors a month for talks and signings. I attended one a few months ago and got a chuckle as I passed a B&N with a nearly empty parking lot while, 3 blocks away, PP's small lot was full and other cars were tightly parked on the street.

 

[oggbashan]

We have a lovely bookshop in Scottsdale that is alive and thriving because its focus is mysteries and thrillers. It's called The Poisoned Pen. They have a great newsletter to keep readers informed of upcoming releases, and bring in several authors a month for talks and signings. I attended one a few months ago and got a chuckle as I passed a B&N with a nearly empty parking lot while, 3 blocks away, PP's small lot was full and other cars were tightly parked on the street.

Many small scale UK dealers survive by being very specialist. One of my local colleagues, now retired like me, had an obscure specialism - 17th Century Protestant Polemic. He knew everything there is to know about the arguments between English divines during the 17th Century, and could source - for a price - any author on that subject.

My speciality was SPQR - small profits, quick returns. I would buy my secondhand books cheaply in bulk, sell on any specialist ones to other dealers at trade prices (prices that meant that could make a profit on them), and sell general stock to the public at lower prices even than charity shops.

From arrival in my shop to dispersal of the specialist stock was less than a week; and 'normal' secondhand books would be reduced to next to nothing within three months.

But if someone offered me 'good' = expensive collectable books, I wouldn't buy. I would suggest another appropriate local bookdealer who might be interested.

My purchase price was often nothing, just a promise to take every book away so the seller didn't have to pay a house clearer.

 

[Over_Red]

I'm fine with the increases in the minimum wage in California cities. They'll be good testing grounds for highly automated shops and services.

Once self-driving cars become the norm in ten years, we're going to lose about 3 to 4 million jobs from the transport industry in the following decade (at least in the US). The oncoming automation wave driven by robotics and smart computing will viciously gut the job market.

The exact value of the minimum wage is small potatoes. In 30-40 years the first world will have chronic +25% unemployment. The real consideration needs to be something along the lines of a minimum guaranteed income replacing the inefficient and ineffectual fly-trapping bureaucratic nightmare that is the modern welfare system.

 

[sr71plt]

Don't hold your breath for wide-spread self-drive cars. I have a Scholastic magazine from the late 50s that assured me flying cars would be the norm by the late 60s and that even before that our cars would go on rails and we'd just dial in the destination. Some possible innovations just don't make all that much sense or require far too much retooling of the superstructure. (I don't even want a self-driving car. But then I don't want to plug in an electric car until there are plug ins around every corner, and I don't see that happening in the next decade or two.)

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Don't hold your breath for wide-spread self-drive cars. I have a Scholastic magazine from the late 50s that assured me flying cars would be the norm by the late 60s and that even before that our cars would go on rails and we'd just dial in the destination. Some possible innovations just don't make all that much sense or require far too much retooling of the superstructure. (I don't even want a self-driving car. But then I don't want to plug in an electric car until there are plug ins around every corner, and I don't see that happening in the next decade or two.)

You are a Neanderthal.

Self-drive cars - gas or otherwise - are here. The next few years will see a rollout even more dramatic than cruise control.

 

[sr71plt]

You are a Neanderthal.

Self-drive cars - gas or otherwise - are here. The next few years will see a rollout even more dramatic than cruise control.

I never use cruise control on my cars either. I don't want to give over control to anything else when I'm driving.

And I'm certainly not a Neanderthal on either self-drive or electric cars either. You have let commercials dupe you (which isn't hard to do with you) if you think that either is functionally here yet to any substantial degree--or for some time to come.

 

[TamLin01]

Interesting that their costs for space are $25-$100/ hr. Maybe they should be looking for a cheaper place?

That's about par for the city, actually.

 

[Over_Red]

Don't take my word for it, sr71plt, check out this documentary on the subject of automation. It's 15 minutes, not too long. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Humans Need Not Apply:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

This is all a bit splurgy, but I'm a confirmed technophile. Feel free to ignore if it's not your cup of tea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

In April 2014, the team announced that their vehicles have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles (1.1 million km). In late May, Google revealed a new prototype of its driverless car, which had no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, being 100% autonomous.

On December 22, 2014, Google unveiled a fully functioning prototype of their driverless car and planned to test it on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in 2015.

Limitations

The vehicles are unable to recognize temporary traffic signals. They have not proven themselves in snow or rain. They are also unable to navigate through parking lots. Vehicles are unable to differentiate between pedestrian and policeman or between crumpled up paper and a rock. Google projects having these issues fixed by 2024.

To give you an idea of the scale of what Google is doing, their car has a laser mounted on the top. The laser spins around, continuously mapping out a bubble of 3-D space around the car. This digital image is, moment-by-moment, computationally compared to an already-stored image of that area (this is the reason for Google Street View, not so people can go look at their houses). The composite data is constructed by computer farms Google has built, and this is sent back to the car, allowing it to drive accurately.

With that kind of stuff going on, I seriously doubt that it's going to be much longer before they have the few kinks ironed out. They aren't thinking about doing this; they have the prototypes going and are actively iterating.

For more on limitations, and the solutions to them, you can check out this article:

http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/autonomous-driving-bad-weather/

A lot of car companies, not wanting to be left in Google's dust, are taking up the challenge of self-driving cars. The bad weather problem is being solved by having cars talk to each other and to wireless signals embedded in infrastructure hotspots such as traffic lights, as well as using methods other than cameras or vision-reliant systems. Half-automated systems like self-parking, self-braking, self-traffic jam navigation, and GPS rerouting, all currently on the market right now, represent initial commercial steps toward a fully automated vehicle.

It'll be sort of like fax machines. The more there are on the road, the better they'll get.

Initially the fully self-driving cars won't be very affordable. For example, Google's system costs upwards of 100,000 dollars. That's just the prototype, of course; the price would probably drop dramatically for the production model. Anyway, it'll be the transport companies that make those initial big investments, because they have the capital to spend the motivation to want to save money in the long run. That will drive the technology into the cheaper realm of personal sales to you and me.

In 2030, self-driving will be standard on luxury models and an option on every other car.

By the way, the Tesla car company is doing a pretty good job of installing those rapid-charge plug in stations you want for your electric car.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

The future is now!

 

[sr71plt]

I take it you missed the word "prototype."

God, media promotion hype can make people so gullible.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

. . .Capitalists are always telling me that if we raise the minimum wage they will just raise prices accordingly and nothing will get better. To which my reaction is, "Really? You've just suffered a significant increase in your costs and you're looking at a customer base with more disposable income, so your solution is to drive demand down by raising prices? Well what a freaking rocket scientist you must be."

Actually, it's simple math, not rocket scientist math. Businesses bigger than a Mom & Pop store gauge budgets as much by percentages.

Take rent as an example, especially at the mall or that big outlet center filled with lots of shops. There are two rent thresholds. First, your base rent, which you will always owe to the shopping center. The second rent threshold is based on sales per square foot. Once your sales per square foot exceed a certain number, your rent becomes "percentage rent." Instead of paying $3000 a month for your 1500 square foot store ($2 per square foot), you start paying a flat percentage of your sales. So maybe you're rent becomes $3 per sq. ft. Or $4.

Looking at just the dollars you're spending on rent, it seems unfair to see your rent go from $3000 per month to $4500 or $6000, BUT, if you've worked your business plan based on percentages, you don't really care.

Let's say that original base rent represents 20% of your costs. That means you're anticipating averaging $15,000 is sales per month. Let's assume the mall or strip center says, "Rent is the greater of $3000 or 20% of sales per square ft." If you're month sales become $30K per month, your rent is STILL 20% of sales, even though the dollar amount becomes $6000.

Understanding these percentages is key when trying to understand labor costs. Most retail and restaurants run with a margin of 15-20% for labor and 30-35% for product costs. That 15-20% for labor is a fixed percentage. IF the government mandates a higher minimum wage, the business owner will reduce staffing to keep labor between 15-20%, regardless of sales volume, because 15-20% is the percentage that keeps the company profitable.

Increase minimum wage and anticipate employers to figure out different ways to pay employees. Perhaps more employees will find themselves working on a commission basis where employees are guaranteed minimum wage, but their actual hourly wage is much less (much like a waiter) and the balance is made up based on performance (i.e. - how often they Super Size a customer or get someone to buy a hot apple pie or an extended warranty).

IF my expenses go up, whether it's labor, rent, or the cost supplies, my prices will go up, too. If customers won't pay the increased prices, then I can't stay in business. It's nothing personal. It's not about whether I believe everyone should be paid a "livable wage," it's about math. My business is not your charity. If you can't afford to shop in my shop, then I can't afford to pay my employees. If I can't afford to pay my employees without a price hike . . . you get the idea.

 

[Over_Red]

I take it you missed the word "prototype."

God, media promotion hype can make people so gullible.

It's not hype. The department of transportation in the US wants to make vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems mandatory by 2017.

I realize it's easy to be skeptical because you always have everyone saying that "everything's just ten years away!" and then ten years pass and we still don't have flying cars and jetpacks. This is different; the technology is here, it's practical, and they're perfecting it.

 

[Hypoxia]

They promised me an atomic helicopter, the lying bastards. But I digress. Old AC Clarke said something very like: If a senior scientist says something is possible, they're probably right. If they say something is impossible, they're probably wrong. Actually, flying cars exist, just not very many of them. And one these days, WalMart will sell sexbots. Wait up.

 

[sr71plt]

Talk is cheap. Rolling out prototypes and time charts is also a whole lot cheaper than regearing infrastructure (infrastructure that we're falling ever further behind just in maintaining as is).

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Actually, it's simple math, not rocket scientist math. Businesses bigger than a Mom & Pop store gauge budgets as much by percentages.

Take rent as an example, especially at the mall or that big outlet center filled with lots of shops. There are two rent thresholds. First, your base rent, which you will always owe to the shopping center. The second rent threshold is based on sales per square foot. Once your sales per square foot exceed a certain number, your rent becomes "percentage rent." Instead of paying $3000 a month for your 1500 square foot store ($2 per square foot), you start paying a flat percentage of your sales. So maybe you're rent becomes $3 per sq. ft. Or $4.

Looking at just the dollars you're spending on rent, it seems unfair to see your rent go from $3000 per month to $4500 or $6000, BUT, if you've worked your business plan based on percentages, you don't really care.

Let's say that original base rent represents 20% of your costs. That means you're anticipating averaging $15,000 is sales per month. Let's assume the mall or strip center says, "Rent is the greater of $3000 or 20% of sales per square ft." If you're month sales become $30K per month, your rent is STILL 20% of sales, even though the dollar amount becomes $6000.

Understanding these percentages is key when trying to understand labor costs. Most retail and restaurants run with a margin of 15-20% for labor and 30-35% for product costs. That 15-20% for labor is a fixed percentage. IF the government mandates a higher minimum wage, the business owner will reduce staffing to keep labor between 15-20%, regardless of sales volume, because 15-20% is the percentage that keeps the company profitable.

Increase minimum wage and anticipate employers to figure out different ways to pay employees. Perhaps more employees will find themselves working on a commission basis where employees are guaranteed minimum wage, but their actual hourly wage is much less (much like a waiter) and the balance is made up based on performance (i.e. - how often they Super Size a customer or get someone to buy a hot apple pie or an extended warranty).

IF my expenses go up, whether it's labor, rent, or the cost supplies, my prices will go up, too. If customers won't pay the increased prices, then I can't stay in business. It's nothing personal. It's not about whether I believe everyone should be paid a "livable wage," it's about math. My business is not your charity. If you can't afford to shop in my shop, then I can't afford to pay my employees. If I can't afford to pay my employees without a price hike . . . you get the idea.

All your profits in the string you save. J.C. PENNY