First let me be clear this is not a dig at LH, its a genuine question that I assume has a boring but inescapable answer, like tax or something equally exciting.
With that out fo the way, Just a quick Hello as this is my first post on these forums.
A quick google search shows most of the LH stock avalible online for home delivery in many other countries but for example an item I was looking at is £25 delivered in the UK and £8.75 in the US. This is not the first time I've pondered this question just this time I thought I might ask people who could well have an expert answer.
From a manufacturing point of view (engineer by trade) the production process is hardly complex, they are large and weighty but thats postage and an independant issue the world over.
I'm sure it's more than likely to do with tax. Take that £8.75 dildo in the US. If you brought it and you're unluckily enough to get it to go through customs, you will be charged the tax on top of that. You would also be charged a delivery fee. (I think it's a handling fee of £8) something like that for RM ONTOP of the original delivery charge. If it's sent by FEDEX ect the handling fee is usually a lot more expensive than that.
Yes on occasion you may grab a bargain and be lucky enough that your item didn't go through customs and get those extra charges levid on. But most of the time you end up paying more for the item if you ordered from out of the UK than you would if you ordered from within the UK.
why is anything cheaper in the US?. for £130,000 i could go and buy a 6 bed detached house in NC and I could eat out every day for less than it costs to buy food at supermarket here.
I expect that things are cheaper in the US due to tax and overheads of companies, but then wages are less and so people have less money to pay for things so it comes around in a circle.
Of course, you can try and use it to your advantage and import the cheaper priced products from the US but our own custom charges etc will bump the price back up
Where to start...
Exchange rates
Interest rates
Production cost
Shipping cost
Overheads
Local tax
International tax agreements
Demand & alternatives
Supply & competitors
Because they can
because we will pay it
Import duty
Availability of commodity (or shortage thereof)
Economies of scale
Mark up and VAT
It's been 10 years+ since I did this stuff so I'm sure I've missed some
So if you have a Buyer searching the market and buying stock, you will need someone on 'Goods Inwards' receiving and stacking stock. You also need a wharehouse/unit to store said stock. You need someone to work in the despatch and making up orders. But before you get the orders made up you need someone in sales to market the stock and get the orders........
So I think that lots of companies need to earn several thousand pounds a week just to put a key in the door.
It depends on the type of dildos you're talking about really, because to be fair you can get some dirt cheap dildos in the UK, but the reason they're so cheap is because they're made from pretty gross materials, and mass produced by unskilled labourers earning a pittance in some factory in China.
If you want to talk about high quality silicone dildos, say from Tantus, then there are a number of factors involved. Silicone is an expensive raw material so that raises the price to begin with. The dildos are handmade, so that's more skilled and labour intensive work, and you're getting less products produced for every man hour of work. The dildos are made in the United States where the staff get a better wage than in China. All this creates a more expensive product before you even think about selling them.
In order to sell them in the UK you first have to get them here, which means paying for shipping from the U.S to the UK. Added cost. Because we're stuck in the EU we can't negotiate a free trade deal with the U.S. so as soon as the products arrive you have to pay import duty on them. Another cost. Then there are all the expenses involved with running a business in the UK: there's a higher rate of corporation tax in the UK, British businesses have to make National Insurance contributions for all their staff, rents on properties are higher, utilities bills cost more. All these things are added costs which have to be applied on top of the wholesale price of the products in order for companies to make a profit, and then before you can sell it don't forget to add on an extra 20% of the price in VAT.
Overheads are generally lower for U.S. retailers, and don't forget that in America they don't include any tax in the online prices, because sales tax is handled on a state by state basis, and you only have to pay the tax if you're ordering from the same state as the store is based in.
I know it sucks, but this is the situation we're stuck with in rip-off Britain, where the government wants to make you pay more for everything.