Week of 2/11/26

I told someone they should raise their prices because they weren’t even getting keystone. They asked what keystone meant.

When we started our eCommerce store in 1999, keystone was a common way retailers priced products purchased from distributors. It simply meant pricing at roughly double the wholesale cost. That logic makes sense as a starting point for retail, although it isn’t applied the same way to wholesalers selling direct.

Today, people don’t talk in those terms as much. The same idea shows up as gross margin, contribution margin, markup, or whether something clears a 2x. The language has changed, but the pricing conversation is still about margins and sustainability. ●