A number of national companies work off a 300% mark up on goods they buy. We still think we are getting a bargain when we get 50% off in a Sale. No wonder internet companies can do well. They have less overheads and the competition drives down prices.
Utter rubbish! Which national companies can mark up 300%? Possibly the odd one in the fashion industry and that's about it. Where do you get this stuff from?
I'm a retailer turning over several million pounds a year with shops and an Internet operation. My gross margin has gone down from 30% ten years ago to 20% now, which means that our mark-up before VAT is 25%. So a product selling at £120 shows us, on average a profit of £20.00.
But the mark-up on our more expensive products is more like 8 - 10% because there are people working from sheds, with low overheads who are often desperate for cash-flow and will cut and cut, until they go bust, which happens regularly. There is a huge difference between selling branded goods, on which people can compare prices, and on fashion items on which it's impossible to compare like with like.
We recently sold one very specialised item for £8500 and made a profit of £400, but we have no choice but to sell the high-end items because if we don't we won't sell the widgets and accessories on which we can get a higher margin.
You seem to belong to the class of person who only sees the rich and successful businessman and completely forget or ignore all those out there who lose everything, often through no fault of their own. You may be the best book-seller in the business but you can't compete with Amazon or the switch to e-books. You may have been a very good butcher but you cannot all compete with the supermarkets. And I say 'all' because the odd butcher still survives but only because every other one in his town has closed.
So please, before you post all this kind of stuff about people marking up 300%, go to any of the free company-accounts firms who will let you have a firm's accounts free of charge, and have a look at a few gross margins. Tesco's as an example is 21.4% which falls rather short of the ludicrous figures that you're quoting!
Taking another example M & S. Its gross margin is about 40%, which you'd expect from a retailer heavily dependent on clothing. But is cost are much higher than Tesco as it has city centre stores and a much higher staff to customer ratio.
Lax controls allowed Mexican (and probably other) drug cartels to launder money through them. There are even links to Iran and Al Qaeda.