Hi peter,
My comments had nothing to do with sorrow--for you or anybody or anything else.
I fully understand the chain that You are describing, but I also understand costs of doing business, ie. labor, Uncle Sam, permits, licenses, property taxes etc, etc, etc--a whole host of expenses that seem to crop up. (Pun intended)
Often times a business will sell a product at cost or at original cost plus estimated overhead just to unload the current stock, because the season, trend, whatever is over or coming to a close. Sometimes they will even sell at a loss in order to reduce their overall loss (dimes on a dollar), or because the trend is over and they made sufficient profit DURING the trend to easily justify unloading the remaining stock quickly. Sometimes, because of Bankruptcy or product discontinuation--Hence, Big Lots, many types of "Dollar" stores, etc.
That is My guess on why PFT is selling VFTs for 79cents: because the peak of the bulk buying season is pretty much over or coming to a close for this year, and they need to unload some overstock. Maybe I'm wrong.
I guess that what I admittedly don't know enough about is TC. I was under the impression that the benefits of TC were much more short-term- I guess not. I wasn't under the impression that plants were raised for yrs in TC. I thought it was simply a matter of months.
If your vendor, or anybody else, can legally raise VFTs with rhizomes that big and sell them for $2.00---I'm behind them completely. Some of my favorites are the "older" plants that I have.
Additional notes on the costs of doing business:The more hands a product travels through--the more markups there are, The markups on living things varies considerably and is higher than non-living things, because living things die, Sometimes the packaging that a product comes in---costs more than the product itself!
As a side note: Some small business owners will work their butt off, take their net 15k profit and a glass of wine and think they have done well for the yr. If they are happy---then I'm happy for them.
Just because someone "owns" a business--doesn't mean they are raking it in hand over fist, or that they are doing well. 9 out 10 business startups fail. #1 reason? Inadequate management. #2 reason? Growing too fast. Get past the first two for 5 yrs---and you MIGHT survive.
But, heck, you're seventeen!