Ad Crucem is often asked about sales, especially when everyone expects them: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday weekend.
The dark truth about retail sales is that they are one trick in a box of deceitful tricks intended to separate you from your money, often for things you don’t really need or want. Retailing employs dozens of schemes that are nearly all lures rather than deals, hence the recent spate of viral videos showing big box store Black Friday price tags hiding original price tags - with no change in price!
Likewise, you’ll notice that Ad Crucem prices never employ the 95 or 99-cent gimmick.
Ad Crucem has rejected the business school version of retailing that starts with an expectation that gross profit margins exceed 40%. Large retailers are happy to shave those down because they rely on massive volume and inventory turnover; think Costco and Sam’s Club at the top end, scaling down through Target and Walmart to small non-chain stores.
The large stores are also eager to offshore manufacturing and compromise quality to sell more of everything. Globalization has given Americans many low-price goodies in exchange for sending their and their children’s jobs abroad.
Ad Crucem is committed to serving the Christian market with primarily American-sourced high-quality materials, many products made in our Littleton, Colorado workshop or supplied by our neighbors (literally!). One of the notable comparisons is the proliferation of laser products. Ad Crucem stands almost alone in using solid wood prepared in Colorado rather than plywood or fiberboard imported from China.
We also eschew the proliferating pyramid models where a business is offered thousands of products from a single faceless dealer like Redbubble, but which imports virtually everything you see.
We don’t start with a markup in mind. Rather, we try to discern price points that will appeal to different segments of our target market and work backward to find a small profit to cover the cost of goods, returns, errors in production, shipping, and apportioned overhead. Accumulated surpluses are invested straight back into the business in the form of new equipment, new products, new ventures, and innovation.
A great advantage for Ad Crucem is that it does not have to pay salaries, healthcare, employment taxes, etc. Thanks to Tim’s full-time employment elsewhere and the family providing nearly all the labor (sweat equity, right!?), so those savings are passed on directly to our appreciated customers.
The model will have to change one day, but we hope to achieve sufficient scale by that point to run on a traditional low-price, high-volume basis that funds all the overhead.
Ad Crucem’s sales activities are confined to:
“Christmas in July” gets us through the mid-year retail sales slump. Select items usually go on sale at near cost.
Not Quite Perfect (NQP) products: we make some dumb errors during production, but the item is not so bad that we must throw it away. Those are sold at a loss, but at least we are recovering some of the cost.
New product promotions: to create awareness and purchasing traction.
Special projects: like Pr. Koontz’s Family Bible Commentary.
Returns: Customers change their minds, or we have shipping and manufacturing errors for special order products. Ad Crucem doesn’t take returns back into inventory, so those products are sold at large discounts.
If you’re looking for the bargain items, go straight here! https://www.adcrucem.com/search?type=product&q=bargain
As always, thank you to everyone who supports Ad Crucem in so many ways. We love serving you and greatly appreciate the blossoming partnership!