It makes me wonder how companies managed to stay in business when there was lack of purchasing power and goods usually cost way more than today compared to the average salaries.
So people wouldn’t buy a lot of new products and generally products lasted longer.
How did companies make money during this period before mass consumption became normal and products started to be sold by the millions?
In: Economics
Same as in any era – you leveraged some sort of ability you had that wasn’t feasible for others to do and sold those goods at a markup.
For example merchants/groups of investors got together and leveraged expensive technologies like seafaring merchant ships to transport in-demand goods from distant lands and sold them for a big profit.
Stuff was also much more expensive in the past for that reason. For example, the most valuable item people used to own was their bed, which was passed down through multiple generations and often the first thing saved in a fire. Technology obviously made a lot of stuff cheaper.
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