Stock Keeping Unit - SKU

A typical grocery store—Safeway, Albertson’s, Krogers—has 88,000 of these.

You read that right. That’s 88,000 units of stuff in their store. It’s “stock”; not like investment stock, really, but stock that cost money, was a kind of store of value, and at essence, an investment itself.

Safeway buys a jar of pickles for $3.25 that it hopes to sell for $6.99. It has expenses behind that jar. It has to store them. Rent ain’t free. It has to charge for them. Visa swipes ain’t free. The union cashier to check them out ain’t free. And there’s risk. Customers drop pickle jars all the time. Does the customer usually pay for them? No. Even if the store can, in fact, ID them.

So that’s 88,000 units in a store. A dozen jars of pickles: a dozen units.



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