The Value Of A Watermelon, A Parable by Bill Roberts
I always enjoy it when I take a bit of time to enjoy a bit of wisdom from my friend Bill Roberts.
Stop by his blog and enjoy this post and many other classics.
The Value Of A Watermelon, A Parable
This is the story of Joe, an enterprising young fellow who bought 100watermelons, iced them, and took them to the beach to sell.
He had planned on selling the watermelons for $5 each, but when hegot to the beach he saw a lot of people, maybe 50,000 and no
watermelon sellers.
So he priced his wares at $10 for each ice-cold watermelon.
He sold out in minutes.
He made a nice profit.
He was happy.
Johnny, who was at the beach that day witnessed this red-hot ice-coldwatermelon market. Johnny said to himself, "I can do that. I know
where I can buy a truckload of watermelons for $1 each."
So the next weekend Johnny showed up at the beach with 1000 ice-cold watermelons. So did 999 other guys. It seems everybody had the
same idea. One million ice-cold Watermelons.
Johnny tried to sell his Watermelons for $10 like Joe did, but he wasonly able to sell a couple watermelons. It seems that the other guys
weren't doing any better.
Johnny said "I got to lower my price or I'm going to be stuck with thesethings."
So he reduced his price to $9, then $8, and eventually got down to $1.He was able to sell out at that price, but he only made about $25
profit for the entire day.
Some of the other watermelon sellers weren't as lucky as Johnny. Theywere slow to reduce their prices, so they got stuck with most of their
watermelons.
After all, 50,000 people at the beach might seem like a "BIG MARKET,"BUT when you have 1,000,000 watermelons there is no way you can
sell them all.
What's the Moral?
Now there is a moral to this story, but I would like you to tell me whatit is.
And I am sure that it applies to real estate. Do you know how?
Comments(5)