Noka Chocolate's Brilliant Scam: The Ultimate Mark-Up
There seems to be no end to the horde of retailers striving to cash in by selling "up-market" items. I mean everything is being up-marketed, right? Coffee, kitchen appliances, cell phones, shoes, even pick-up trucks.! Not that there's anything wrong with that! Except of course when I would prefer to spend a couple bucks for a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee instead of half a day's pay for an eggplant-and-goat-cheese-panini and a mochalattachino decaf.
Fair enough, there are people out there with the means and the desire to pay for the best, so that means they need people to make and sell the best. The thing is, how do they know that what they're getting really is the best? How many of them are being conned by their assumption that big price = high quality, and a little bit of clever marketing.
For example, take Noka Chocolate. Hailed as the "#1 Luxury Chocolate in the World!" and with prices that go up to nearly $10 per [i]piece[/i]! Now that's some seriously expensive, seriously up-market chocolate! Noka says that it's chocolate is special because it's single-origin dark chocolate with 75% cacao, with no additives or preservatives. But the big question is -- is it worth it?
Scott at DallasFood.org (via BoingBoing) dared ask, and more importantly answer, that very question. And his 10-part blog report of his investigation is fascinating. I hate to give away the ending, but the bottom line is that while Noka chocolate is good when compared to other high-quality, up-market chocolates, it's not all that special. Basically, they buy chocolate in bulk (known in the choc biz as couverture) from Bonnat, a small, French chocolate maker, then they melt it down and mold it into little Noka rectangles and truffles, and then essentially resell the chocolate as their own brand.
No big deal about that -- it's the way lots of chocolatiers (as opposed to chocolate makers) do business. Because for them, it's not so much the chocolate that matters, it's what they can do with it. But Noka doesn't play it that way. They try to scam people into believing they create their own chocolate -- "from bean to bar" -- and that their chocolate is so much better than any other chocolate out there, it's worth paying the ridiculously high prices they charge. The thing is, you can buy the exact same chocolate they use for a fraction of the price. A 100g bar of Bonnat will set you back $7.50.
Scott crunched the numbers and worked out that Noka is probably getting their Bonnat couverture for about $12 per pound, and then reselling it for $309 to $2080 per pound! Now that is some serious mark-up!
So what? What's this got to do with the stuff I talk about here on FreeCashSpace? What's it got to do with making money online? Basically, it has to do with something I see a lot -- people who will do anything to make money. Not just online, because it happens all over the place out there in the real world, but it happens a lot here in cyberspace, too. No morals. No ethics. No decency. No value. Just money, whatever it takes.
I wonder which is responsible for more human suffering -- hate or greed? These days, I'm thinking it's greed. And in a world of plenty, that's just sad.
Fair enough, there are people out there with the means and the desire to pay for the best, so that means they need people to make and sell the best. The thing is, how do they know that what they're getting really is the best? How many of them are being conned by their assumption that big price = high quality, and a little bit of clever marketing.
For example, take Noka Chocolate. Hailed as the "#1 Luxury Chocolate in the World!" and with prices that go up to nearly $10 per [i]piece[/i]! Now that's some seriously expensive, seriously up-market chocolate! Noka says that it's chocolate is special because it's single-origin dark chocolate with 75% cacao, with no additives or preservatives. But the big question is -- is it worth it?
Scott at DallasFood.org (via BoingBoing) dared ask, and more importantly answer, that very question. And his 10-part blog report of his investigation is fascinating. I hate to give away the ending, but the bottom line is that while Noka chocolate is good when compared to other high-quality, up-market chocolates, it's not all that special. Basically, they buy chocolate in bulk (known in the choc biz as couverture) from Bonnat, a small, French chocolate maker, then they melt it down and mold it into little Noka rectangles and truffles, and then essentially resell the chocolate as their own brand.
No big deal about that -- it's the way lots of chocolatiers (as opposed to chocolate makers) do business. Because for them, it's not so much the chocolate that matters, it's what they can do with it. But Noka doesn't play it that way. They try to scam people into believing they create their own chocolate -- "from bean to bar" -- and that their chocolate is so much better than any other chocolate out there, it's worth paying the ridiculously high prices they charge. The thing is, you can buy the exact same chocolate they use for a fraction of the price. A 100g bar of Bonnat will set you back $7.50.
Scott crunched the numbers and worked out that Noka is probably getting their Bonnat couverture for about $12 per pound, and then reselling it for $309 to $2080 per pound! Now that is some serious mark-up!
So what? What's this got to do with the stuff I talk about here on FreeCashSpace? What's it got to do with making money online? Basically, it has to do with something I see a lot -- people who will do anything to make money. Not just online, because it happens all over the place out there in the real world, but it happens a lot here in cyberspace, too. No morals. No ethics. No decency. No value. Just money, whatever it takes.
I wonder which is responsible for more human suffering -- hate or greed? These days, I'm thinking it's greed. And in a world of plenty, that's just sad.
