Saturday 12 May 2007

Supply and Demand

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a wookie in a hut. Now the wookie's parents had just died when we join him, so after many intricate, ethereal and suspiciously gothic ceremonies, to mark his parents passage into the great void, the Wookie, being the pragmatic individual he was settled down to look at his inheritance. His parents had left him a brilliant collection of hair from famous wookies from all aver the planet Endor. The wookie was happy.

Now Chewbacca, who had dropped by, in his typically forthright manner informed the wookie, henceforth known as Bob (as its easier to type), that he should sell this hair onwards and maybe keep only a little bit for himself as a momento to his parents, as what the hell was he going to do with a collection of bloody hair, "which was useless" he said. Now Chewbacca didn't know that hair for wookies, isnt grown, rather it is glued on, after obtaining it from any reasonable hairdressers, so after an offended looking Bob tartly informed him of this information, the reasonably chastened Chewbacca realised that due to the scarcity of humans, and thus hairdressers whos business needs humans, the hair was worth a bomb.

so the supply is limited, and demand is huge, hence the price is going to be astronomical...now Bob starts rolling in the big bucks, he has the whole merchandise going, hell at one point he was even going for wookie chieftain...but then a hair mine is discovered and suddenly, along with his own hair collection, Wookie market is flooded with new mined hair. The supply increases, the demand goes down, as wookies mania for new hair is satiated and people dont regard this as the "in-thing" or necessary anymore. No one buys the hairs anymore from Bob's shop, so Bob is forced to price down, and match his price to the relatively low current demand, and he starts selling at the most effective price.
The question is....what would happen if say for example if the mining firm collapsed due to some random tradegy at the mine, or better still, some shocking revelation about the owner, and keeping in mind that wookie demand for hair is relatively inelastic (meaning they dont give a damn about the price and pay whatever to get it) what would happen to the price, and how could Bob improve his business model further.
dicuss

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About Me

LEICESTER, East Midlands, United Kingdom
Co-founder of DesignMolvi, Qur'an hafidh, graduate of Oxford University. Now blogging at www.islamicfinanceguru.com