I thought the retail margin was related to (essentially) how much floor space your product takes and how often it is stolen. High-end electronics should be less than 50%. I certainly doubt that a flagship smartphone has 50% retail margin, for example.

> and how often it is stolen

And how often it is returned to the store because buyer didn't like it. Some things can be resold, but most of the time the seller eats up the costs. It is always amusing for me to see people being outraged by the costs and seeing nothing wrong with returning something to the store just because they can.

The store could sell it on for a 20% discount though. I would have thought there'd be enough of a market for that.

I was surprised to see that retail stores get 50%. I was looking at fake leather bags the other day and they really look very high quality and sells for 10USD. I can't imagine making that bag for 5USD and making a profit off of it.

For consumer electronics? More like 15%. Less for competitive SKUs.

Retailers make more money on cables and mounting brackets than a TV, for example.

I bought my current digital camera when one big-box electronics retailer had a special "we're paying your VAT" offer going on – over here, VAT is 19 %, and when the shop assistant entered the rebate, the POS system popped up a warning that the sale price was less than the shop's cost price.

I don't remember the exact price, but it does indeed mean that the margin must have been less than 16 %.

When I worked a big box retailer in the 90s, usually the stuff that had fancy displays had a more generous margin. There’s also below the line margin from paid shelf placement and other things.