Dougster said:
It transpires that workers producing the clothing for Primark do so for $8 per week (75p per day). Can Aldi afford to pay more on these prices?
Aldi pay their English managers something like £38,000 a year, and their shop staff £6.10 an hour.
Most of the day to day products are manufactured in the EU. Nearly all of Aldis goods are private label, made under strict cost control, but still within the EUs stricter laws, Aldi keep a restricted range of good that people really want, and very little of what is called impulse buy/shopping.
The stores are tiny in comparison to others in the same market and are packed pretty tightly, they keep only stuff that sells quickly, and are willing to run out of stock rather than have waste inventory. No credit cards, new distribution methods all over, meaning they can make up to 30% saving just in the distributions costs alone (something like £300 per lorry per day) Bring your own bags or buy them, saving 100,000 bags per month. (Even at 10 a penny that is still a saving) Few trolleys and only at the bigger stores save £500 per unit, and you have to pay to use them, so shoppers tend to return them, negating the need for outside staff.
All in all a lot of bigger stores could learn a hell of a lot about selling what the people want at a price that they can afford. I mean who needs 80 different brands of baked beans. And seventy types of tea bags or thirty brands of drinking chocolate. My local superstore store has a double isle of canned vegetables, including sixteen different types of tinned tomatoes, chopped, mashed, with herbs, with garlic, low sugar, low salt, low juice, hi juice, low IQ two isles is 2x14 metres of tinned vegetables.
30% of food bought from super markets is thrown away unopened. Supermarkets calculate a 7% wastage before it even gets to the shelves. I used to work for a supermarket chain (Ok I was a contractor) and they had a waste compactor that was changed every few days. One smallish store 20 tonnes per week, week in week out. Food wasted because housewives want it on the shelves, fresh every hour, ring a bell and they like Pavlovs dogs come running. Not caring that any fresh bread on the shelve unsold is coated in blue dye and trashed
Aldi dont do it like that, they sell cheap and when its gone, you are out of luck. M&S used to do the same (I worked there too) All it means is if you want it, you have to get there earlier.
