Why don't NappiesRus sell Betterdrys on their website anymore?

[bobbilly]

I notice they've stopped selling them. They are getting hard to buy in the UK.

 

[ABUTonyUK]

I notice they've stopped selling them. They are getting hard to buy in the UK.

Not that hard. *cough https://uk.abuniverse.com/products/better-dry cough*

 

[ben0510]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I did buy a 15 pack of betterdry on ebay just last week.

 

[Belarin]

Havnt really noticed them on NRU as its not brand I buy much any more, but as @ABUTonyUK pointed out the ABU site usually has them in stock.

Think I've even seen them on amazon a few times recently.

The one that's really getting to me is the kiddo teddy's ultra which have been out of stock on NRU for ages now I really need more of them as down to about 4 left, I would prefer not to have to go direct to diaper minister and possibly pay import fees and higher postage.

 

[ben0510]

Thats the same with the kiddo junior plus. can't get those now for love nor money. someone on here suggested it might be because of brexit. not sure about that though.

 

[HappyNappin]

NRU don't seem to be interested in selling European brands anymore, just tykables and there own stuff.

 

[LittleRascal]

NRU don't seem to be interested in selling European brands anymore, just tykables and there own stuff.

They sell Kiddo as well, as a company NRU are going downhill I would love to see abu create like monthly onesies and fresh little gear each month I've got an entire plan for that oh well we will just have to see but ultimately NRU will probably be left behind if ABU play their cards right.

 

[moorey]

ABU UK I think is very poor for no onesies and 80% of medium nappies are out of stock and have been for some now

 

[LittleRascal]

ABU UK I think is very poor for no onesies and 80% of medium nappies are out of stock and have been for some now

Yeah they've hiked the prices up on the nappies which has led a lot of people to stop buying as frequently or just not at all (including myself)
What companies don't realise is that yes ABDL is a luxury but one we're not willing to bankrupt for this "luxury"

People can just buy drynites and other cheap alternatives or simply cut down on how many they use say to like 2 nappies per week.
You have to boycott the ridiculous prices we're not in covid anymore and there's no excuse for it, I appreciate the recent lower costs and free postage that's massive but they need to be £18 or for American folk $22 and a case should cost no more than £65 with £70 being the max and until it does count me out.

However ABU seriously well done for the efforts you have made and in comparison to NRU it's night and day!

 

[moorey]

Yeah they've hiked the prices up on the nappies which has led a lot of people to stop buying as frequently or just not at all (including myself)
What companies don't realise is that yes ABDL is a luxury but one we're not willing to bankrupt for this "luxury"

People can just buy drynites and other cheap alternatives or simply cut down on how many they use say to like 2 nappies per week.
You have to boycott the ridiculous prices we're not in covid anymore and there's no excuse for it, I appreciate the recent lower costs and free postage that's massive but they need to be £18 or for American folk $22 and a case should cost no more than £65 with £70 being the max and until it does count me out.

However ABU seriously well done for the efforts you have made and in comparison to NRU it's night and day!

I disagree NRU UK are fantastic I buy a case of megamax £89 which is 2.22 per unit and I got a case of daydreamer for £70 they are awesome value and service is brilliant to and it’s Rammed with stock ABU UK doesn’t have this the only places ABU is in stock is EBay and Amazon I think ABU are using distributors and possibly winding down the UK site which means you will only be able to buy their products from recommended distributors who will probably sell the product at outrageous prices and pray on the weak we will see, they already farmed out a load of workers from the USA plant because of financial issues and most of the people that were made redundant were the people who were ABDL themselves they created the wonderful designs and took them in a great direction, but now these people are not there, if you would like to see that for yourself, watch it on YouTube diaper TV I think the title is problems with ABU do miss there lollipop though Rant over Sorry ABU

 

[LittleRascal]

I disagree NRU UK are fantastic I buy a case of megamax £89 which is 2.22 per unit and I got a case of daydreamer for £70 they are awesome value and service is brilliant to and it’s Rammed with stock ABU UK doesn’t have this the only places ABU is in stock is EBay and Amazon I think ABU are using distributors and possibly winding down the UK site which means you will only be able to buy their products from recommended distributors who will probably sell the product at outrageous prices and pray on the weak we will see, they already farmed out a load of workers from the USA plant because of financial issues and most of the people that were made redundant were the people who were ABDL themselves they created the wonderful designs and took them in a great direction, but now these people are not there, if you would like to see that for yourself, watch it on YouTube diaper TV I think the title is problems with ABU do miss there lollipop though Rant over Sorry ABU

I wasn't aware of this but they probably cut staff to meet the requirements without hiking products exponentially either way £83 for 40 tinimals + £6 p+p so basically £90 is beyond ridiculous.

 

[moorey]

I wasn't aware of this but they probably cut staff to meet the requirements without hiking products exponentially either way £83 for 40 tinimals + £6 p+p so basically £90 is beyond ridiculous.

Totally agree

 

[Belarin]

You have to boycott the ridiculous prices we're not in covid anymore and there's no excuse for it, I appreciate the recent lower costs and free postage that's massive but they need to be £18 or for American folk $22 and a case should cost no more than £65 with £70 being the max and until it does count me out.

Apologies for another of my notoriously long posts here, but comments like this tug at me a little bit, my experience and knowledge is far from complete on the subject but I do have some understanding of business and costs involved.

Here's the thing, everyone complains about the price of nappies going up and yes I agree 100% they are getting expensive especially on the printed front and it is getting a bit ridiculous at times. But you have to consider things from the other side too.

Sure the material cost to manufacture a diaper (core, ADL fabric, SAP, elastics, glue/hook and loop etc.) is very cheap per unit and can come to anywhere around £0.10 to £0.30 per diaper if buying and producing in mass quantities, materials would work out around £6 for a bag of 20.

This really doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that the company making them also needs to pay for other things. Please note this next bit is probably not perfectly accurate (converting a lot from US to UK since that's where the most data is) but has come from a fair bit of research on several occasions.

---

Rent/Lease for manufacturing space​

Let's consider first that a baby diaper manufacturing machine setup is around 36-45 meters long, 9-15 m wide and 5-7 m tall, an adult machine would probably be a bit larger, let's take the dimensions 45 x 15 x 6. That's about 675 square meters or 7,265 square foot.

So the company needs to pay to rent or lease industrial space large enough for the machine and for staff to work in around the machine, and to store raw materials, let's call it 9,000 square foot minimum.

Average industrial rental space in the UK is £11 per sq ft per year, but it can vary so let's say we find a location at £10 to make the math easier. 9,000 sq ft x £10 is £90,000 per year, that's £7,500 p/m, which looking around at a few commercial lettings sites seems about right.

Now that is just to house/run the machine and basic materials, you also then need another warehouse or much larger single warehouse to store the final products before they ship to a supplier.

---

Manufacturing Equipment/Maintenance​

A cheaper end machine setup capable of going from raw materials to finished diaper, with few bells and whistles and a lower production capacity will set you back around £250,000 (absolute basics and second hand)-£800,000 add packaging system to that for maybe another £100,000-£150,000. Now sure this is a one off cost that should eventually pay for itself but you also have to worry about maintenance costs.

These will vary on a number of factors but you could easily be looking at another £35,000 or more per year to keep the machines in good working order. that's about £2,916 p/m.

---

Staffing/Labour​

I Can't find anywhere with a guide or average number of staff to run this equipment, it is a highly automated process but there are things that need people to operate, manage, maintain, move, check stocks and organise resupply/transportation of finished products, Manage finances, communications and customer support etc.

Let's say barest minimum (probably need more than this to operate smoothly) 10 staff all probably supporting in a few roles at say 40 hours a week min wage (£11.44 p/h), that's £23,795 per staff per year or £237,950. This works out to £19,829 p/m. It probably works out higher due to mandatory workplace pension donation rules and finding cover for staff out sick/on holiday etc.

---

Utilities​

Given the average electricity price in the UK and that diaper manufacturing machines seem to be around 265-335 Kw under power, taking a mid ground of 300 Kw running for 7 hours a day works out to £514.40 per day just to power the machine, add in power for lighting/heating/computers to run the business etc. round it up to maybe £600 per day, 5 days a week x 52 then divide by 12 is £13,000 p/m in electricity costs.

Add water, phone lines, internet and other necessary items to that and you can probably add a few more grand so let's take an estimate of about £20,000 p/m.

---

Additional​

There are a number of other expenses that also come into play from packaging materials (best I could find was an estimate of about £150 per tonne of diapers), R&D to develop your lines and/or improve products, market research etc. Insurance and legal fee's, Transportation of products to suppliers, advertising and product placement...

Some of these costs may seem small but quickly add up, I'm gonna take a guestimate here based on the last hour or so of research for this post (plus some I've done before) and say it might all work out around £20,000 p/m, potentially more.

---

Conclusion​

Take all those "monthly" costs together and it works out about £70,245 p/m in expenses that you need to recoup before making any profit.

Now remember that bag of 20 back at the start if it costs £6 to make them and you sell it for £20, after material costs you get £14.
70,245 / 14 = 5,018 (rounded up) bags that you need to sell every month just to meet running costs and stay in business with no profits building up.

Now let's say an IC person on average uses 4 diapers per day, that bag will last 5 days, around 30 days per month means 6 bags p/m per person.
5,018 / 6 = 836 customers that need to buy 6 bags of your diapers every month or some combination of less diapers with more people.

And all this is only considering a basic "medical grade" diaper, add printing into this or alternative materials (like plastic backing) and your material costs go up by quite a lot as well as power and sq footage on rent for industrial fabric printing machines.

---

Now I don't know how many AB diapers get sold on average maybe someone like @ABUTonyUK could chip in with a rough figure on how many they sell each month or perhaps whether or not they sell 5,000+ bags every month. Given most AB diapers are in bags of 10 (about £3 for materials) a £20 price for that would mean only needing to sell 4,132 bags per month to meet the running costs.

I also get that all this working out is built around a company owning and producing everything and many AB companies may simply be renting time on an existing machine owned by someone else so costs may be a lot lower for them. It also means that if they do meet that sales target they start making £14-£17 per bag in pure profits.

But it is still quite easy to see why many companies (especially ABDL ones) are charging much higher prices when you consider that many ABDL's may only wear 1 or 2 a week, some maybe 1 a day, some maybe even only 2 or 3 times a month etc. If they have to sell thousands of bags a month to make running costs alone and one bag could last 40% of their customers for a month or 3 they need to increase their prices to make up for it.

 

[PadPhilosopher]

Apologies for another of my notoriously long posts here, but comments like this tug at me a little bit, my experience and knowledge is far from complete on the subject but I do have some understanding of business and costs involved.

Here's the thing, everyone complains about the price of nappies going up and yes I agree 100% they are getting expensive especially on the printed front and it is getting a bit ridiculous at times. But you have to consider things from the other side too.

Sure the material cost to manufacture a diaper (core, ADL fabric, SAP, elastics, glue/hook and loop etc.) is very cheap per unit and can come to anywhere around £0.10 to £0.30 per diaper if buying and producing in mass quantities, materials would work out around £6 for a bag of 20.

This really doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that the company making them also needs to pay for other things. Please note this next bit is probably not perfectly accurate (converting a lot from US to UK since that's where the most data is) but has come from a fair bit of research on several occasions.

---

Rent/Lease for manufacturing space​

Let's consider first that a baby diaper manufacturing machine setup is around 36-45 meters long, 9-15 m wide and 5-7 m tall, an adult machine would probably be a bit larger, let's take the dimensions 45 x 15 x 6. That's about 675 square meters or 7,265 square foot.

So the company needs to pay to rent or lease industrial space large enough for the machine and for staff to work in around the machine, and to store raw materials, let's call it 9,000 square foot minimum.

Average industrial rental space in the UK is £11 per sq ft per year, but it can vary so let's say we find a location at £10 to make the math easier. 9,000 sq ft x £10 is £90,000 per year, that's £7,500 p/m, which looking around at a few commercial lettings sites seems about right.

Now that is just to house/run the machine and basic materials, you also then need another warehouse or much larger single warehouse to store the final products before they ship to a supplier.

---

Manufacturing Equipment/Maintenance​

A cheaper end machine setup capable of going from raw materials to finished diaper, with few bells and whistles and a lower production capacity will set you back around £250,000 (absolute basics and second hand)-£800,000 add packaging system to that for maybe another £100,000-£150,000. Now sure this is a one off cost that should eventually pay for itself but you also have to worry about maintenance costs.

These will vary on a number of factors but you could easily be looking at another £35,000 or more per year to keep the machines in good working order. that's about £2,916 p/m.

---

Staffing/Labour​

I Can't find anywhere with a guide or average number of staff to run this equipment, it is a highly automated process but there are things that need people to operate, manage, maintain, move, check stocks and organise resupply/transportation of finished products, Manage finances, communications and customer support etc.

Let's say barest minimum (probably need more than this to operate smoothly) 10 staff all probably supporting in a few roles at say 40 hours a week min wage (£11.44 p/h), that's £23,795 per staff per year or £237,950. This works out to £19,829 p/m. It probably works out higher due to mandatory workplace pension donation rules and finding cover for staff out sick/on holiday etc.

---

Utilities​

Given the average electricity price in the UK and that diaper manufacturing machines seem to be around 265-335 Kw under power, taking a mid ground of 300 Kw running for 7 hours a day works out to £514.40 per day just to power the machine, add in power for lighting/heating/computers to run the business etc. round it up to maybe £600 per day, 5 days a week x 52 then divide by 12 is £13,000 p/m in electricity costs.

Add water, phone lines, internet and other necessary items to that and you can probably add a few more grand so let's take an estimate of about £20,000 p/m.

---

Additional​

There are a number of other expenses that also come into play from packaging materials (best I could find was an estimate of about £150 per tonne of diapers), R&D to develop your lines and/or improve products, market research etc. Insurance and legal fee's, Transportation of products to suppliers, advertising and product placement...

Some of these costs may seem small but quickly add up, I'm gonna take a guestimate here based on the last hour or so of research for this post (plus some I've done before) and say it might all work out around £20,000 p/m, potentially more.

---

Conclusion​

Take all those "monthly" costs together and it works out about £70,245 p/m in expenses that you need to recoup before making any profit.

Now remember that bag of 20 back at the start if it costs £6 to make them and you sell it for £20, after material costs you get £14.
70,245 / 14 = 5,018 (rounded up) bags that you need to sell every month just to meet running costs and stay in business with no profits building up.

Now let's say an IC person on average uses 4 diapers per day, that bag will last 5 days, around 30 days per month means 6 bags p/m per person.
5,018 / 6 = 836 customers that need to buy 6 bags of your diapers every month or some combination of less diapers with more people.

And all this is only considering a basic "medical grade" diaper, add printing into this or alternative materials (like plastic backing) and your material costs go up by quite a lot as well as power and sq footage on rent for industrial fabric printing machines.

---

Now I don't know how many AB diapers get sold on average maybe someone like @ABUTonyUK could chip in with a rough figure on how many they sell each month or perhaps whether or not they sell 5,000+ bags every month. Given most AB diapers are in bags of 10 (about £3 for materials) a £20 price for that would mean only needing to sell 4,132 bags per month to meet the running costs.

I also get that all this working out is built around a company owning and producing everything and many AB companies may simply be renting time on an existing machine owned by someone else so costs may be a lot lower for them. It also means that if they do meet that sales target they start making £14-£17 per bag in pure profits.

But it is still quite easy to see why many companies (especially ABDL ones) are charging much higher prices when you consider that many ABDL's may only wear 1 or 2 a week, some maybe 1 a day, some maybe even only 2 or 3 times a month etc. If they have to sell thousands of bags a month to make running costs alone and one bag could last 40% of their customers for a month or 3 they need to increase their prices to make up for it.

Well said. AB diapers are a high noise but low volume market segment, and it has likely become rather saturated. Economics says cuts and downsizing are inevitable, but the concept will survive; which players do, and in what form, remains to be seen.

 

[HappyNappin]

Apologies for another of my notoriously long posts here, but comments like this tug at me a little bit, my experience and knowledge is far from complete on the subject but I do have some understanding of business and costs involved.

Here's the thing, everyone complains about the price of nappies going up and yes I agree 100% they are getting expensive especially on the printed front and it is getting a bit ridiculous at times. But you have to consider things from the other side too.

Sure the material cost to manufacture a diaper (core, ADL fabric, SAP, elastics, glue/hook and loop etc.) is very cheap per unit and can come to anywhere around £0.10 to £0.30 per diaper if buying and producing in mass quantities, materials would work out around £6 for a bag of 20.

This really doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that the company making them also needs to pay for other things. Please note this next bit is probably not perfectly accurate (converting a lot from US to UK since that's where the most data is) but has come from a fair bit of research on several occasions.

---

Rent/Lease for manufacturing space​

Let's consider first that a baby diaper manufacturing machine setup is around 36-45 meters long, 9-15 m wide and 5-7 m tall, an adult machine would probably be a bit larger, let's take the dimensions 45 x 15 x 6. That's about 675 square meters or 7,265 square foot.

So the company needs to pay to rent or lease industrial space large enough for the machine and for staff to work in around the machine, and to store raw materials, let's call it 9,000 square foot minimum.

Average industrial rental space in the UK is £11 per sq ft per year, but it can vary so let's say we find a location at £10 to make the math easier. 9,000 sq ft x £10 is £90,000 per year, that's £7,500 p/m, which looking around at a few commercial lettings sites seems about right.

Now that is just to house/run the machine and basic materials, you also then need another warehouse or much larger single warehouse to store the final products before they ship to a supplier.

---

Manufacturing Equipment/Maintenance​

A cheaper end machine setup capable of going from raw materials to finished diaper, with few bells and whistles and a lower production capacity will set you back around £250,000 (absolute basics and second hand)-£800,000 add packaging system to that for maybe another £100,000-£150,000. Now sure this is a one off cost that should eventually pay for itself but you also have to worry about maintenance costs.

These will vary on a number of factors but you could easily be looking at another £35,000 or more per year to keep the machines in good working order. that's about £2,916 p/m.

---

Staffing/Labour​

I Can't find anywhere with a guide or average number of staff to run this equipment, it is a highly automated process but there are things that need people to operate, manage, maintain, move, check stocks and organise resupply/transportation of finished products, Manage finances, communications and customer support etc.

Let's say barest minimum (probably need more than this to operate smoothly) 10 staff all probably supporting in a few roles at say 40 hours a week min wage (£11.44 p/h), that's £23,795 per staff per year or £237,950. This works out to £19,829 p/m. It probably works out higher due to mandatory workplace pension donation rules and finding cover for staff out sick/on holiday etc.

---

Utilities​

Given the average electricity price in the UK and that diaper manufacturing machines seem to be around 265-335 Kw under power, taking a mid ground of 300 Kw running for 7 hours a day works out to £514.40 per day just to power the machine, add in power for lighting/heating/computers to run the business etc. round it up to maybe £600 per day, 5 days a week x 52 then divide by 12 is £13,000 p/m in electricity costs.

Add water, phone lines, internet and other necessary items to that and you can probably add a few more grand so let's take an estimate of about £20,000 p/m.

---

Additional​

There are a number of other expenses that also come into play from packaging materials (best I could find was an estimate of about £150 per tonne of diapers), R&D to develop your lines and/or improve products, market research etc. Insurance and legal fee's, Transportation of products to suppliers, advertising and product placement...

Some of these costs may seem small but quickly add up, I'm gonna take a guestimate here based on the last hour or so of research for this post (plus some I've done before) and say it might all work out around £20,000 p/m, potentially more.

---

Conclusion​

Take all those "monthly" costs together and it works out about £70,245 p/m in expenses that you need to recoup before making any profit.

Now remember that bag of 20 back at the start if it costs £6 to make them and you sell it for £20, after material costs you get £14.
70,245 / 14 = 5,018 (rounded up) bags that you need to sell every month just to meet running costs and stay in business with no profits building up.

Now let's say an IC person on average uses 4 diapers per day, that bag will last 5 days, around 30 days per month means 6 bags p/m per person.
5,018 / 6 = 836 customers that need to buy 6 bags of your diapers every month or some combination of less diapers with more people.

And all this is only considering a basic "medical grade" diaper, add printing into this or alternative materials (like plastic backing) and your material costs go up by quite a lot as well as power and sq footage on rent for industrial fabric printing machines.

---

Now I don't know how many AB diapers get sold on average maybe someone like @ABUTonyUK could chip in with a rough figure on how many they sell each month or perhaps whether or not they sell 5,000+ bags every month. Given most AB diapers are in bags of 10 (about £3 for materials) a £20 price for that would mean only needing to sell 4,132 bags per month to meet the running costs.

I also get that all this working out is built around a company owning and producing everything and many AB companies may simply be renting time on an existing machine owned by someone else so costs may be a lot lower for them. It also means that if they do meet that sales target they start making £14-£17 per bag in pure profits.

But it is still quite easy to see why many companies (especially ABDL ones) are charging much higher prices when you consider that many ABDL's may only wear 1 or 2 a week, some maybe 1 a day, some maybe even only 2 or 3 times a month etc. If they have to sell thousands of bags a month to make running costs alone and one bag could last 40% of their customers for a month or 3 they need to increase their prices to make up for it.

While I appreciate you going through all the numbers, it is all largely irrelevant as no abdl brands manufacturer there own products, 99% of it comes from china, which is also having labour and materials price increases, alot of the price increase is forced by shipping and transport.
It would be interesting to see if 'onshoring' starts to become a trend with abdl manufacturing happening locally as a way to actually cut costs and increase flexibility

 

[LittleRascal]

Yo

Apologies for another of my notoriously long posts here, but comments like this tug at me a little bit, my experience and knowledge is far from complete on the subject but I do have some understanding of business and costs involved.

Here's the thing, everyone complains about the price of nappies going up and yes I agree 100% they are getting expensive especially on the printed front and it is getting a bit ridiculous at times. But you have to consider things from the other side too.

Sure the material cost to manufacture a diaper (core, ADL fabric, SAP, elastics, glue/hook and loop etc.) is very cheap per unit and can come to anywhere around £0.10 to £0.30 per diaper if buying and producing in mass quantities, materials would work out around £6 for a bag of 20.

This really doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that the company making them also needs to pay for other things. Please note this next bit is probably not perfectly accurate (converting a lot from US to UK since that's where the most data is) but has come from a fair bit of research on several occasions.

---

Rent/Lease for manufacturing space​

Let's consider first that a baby diaper manufacturing machine setup is around 36-45 meters long, 9-15 m wide and 5-7 m tall, an adult machine would probably be a bit larger, let's take the dimensions 45 x 15 x 6. That's about 675 square meters or 7,265 square foot.

So the company needs to pay to rent or lease industrial space large enough for the machine and for staff to work in around the machine, and to store raw materials, let's call it 9,000 square foot minimum.

Average industrial rental space in the UK is £11 per sq ft per year, but it can vary so let's say we find a location at £10 to make the math easier. 9,000 sq ft x £10 is £90,000 per year, that's £7,500 p/m, which looking around at a few commercial lettings sites seems about right.

Now that is just to house/run the machine and basic materials, you also then need another warehouse or much larger single warehouse to store the final products before they ship to a supplier.

---

Manufacturing Equipment/Maintenance​

A cheaper end machine setup capable of going from raw materials to finished diaper, with few bells and whistles and a lower production capacity will set you back around £250,000 (absolute basics and second hand)-£800,000 add packaging system to that for maybe another £100,000-£150,000. Now sure this is a one off cost that should eventually pay for itself but you also have to worry about maintenance costs.

These will vary on a number of factors but you could easily be looking at another £35,000 or more per year to keep the machines in good working order. that's about £2,916 p/m.

---

Staffing/Labour​

I Can't find anywhere with a guide or average number of staff to run this equipment, it is a highly automated process but there are things that need people to operate, manage, maintain, move, check stocks and organise resupply/transportation of finished products, Manage finances, communications and customer support etc.

Let's say barest minimum (probably need more than this to operate smoothly) 10 staff all probably supporting in a few roles at say 40 hours a week min wage (£11.44 p/h), that's £23,795 per staff per year or £237,950. This works out to £19,829 p/m. It probably works out higher due to mandatory workplace pension donation rules and finding cover for staff out sick/on holiday etc.

---

Utilities​

Given the average electricity price in the UK and that diaper manufacturing machines seem to be around 265-335 Kw under power, taking a mid ground of 300 Kw running for 7 hours a day works out to £514.40 per day just to power the machine, add in power for lighting/heating/computers to run the business etc. round it up to maybe £600 per day, 5 days a week x 52 then divide by 12 is £13,000 p/m in electricity costs.

Add water, phone lines, internet and other necessary items to that and you can probably add a few more grand so let's take an estimate of about £20,000 p/m.

---

Additional​

There are a number of other expenses that also come into play from packaging materials (best I could find was an estimate of about £150 per tonne of diapers), R&D to develop your lines and/or improve products, market research etc. Insurance and legal fee's, Transportation of products to suppliers, advertising and product placement...

Some of these costs may seem small but quickly add up, I'm gonna take a guestimate here based on the last hour or so of research for this post (plus some I've done before) and say it might all work out around £20,000 p/m, potentially more.

---

Conclusion​

Take all those "monthly" costs together and it works out about £70,245 p/m in expenses that you need to recoup before making any profit.

Now remember that bag of 20 back at the start if it costs £6 to make them and you sell it for £20, after material costs you get £14.
70,245 / 14 = 5,018 (rounded up) bags that you need to sell every month just to meet running costs and stay in business with no profits building up.

Now let's say an IC person on average uses 4 diapers per day, that bag will last 5 days, around 30 days per month means 6 bags p/m per person.
5,018 / 6 = 836 customers that need to buy 6 bags of your diapers every month or some combination of less diapers with more people.

And all this is only considering a basic "medical grade" diaper, add printing into this or alternative materials (like plastic backing) and your material costs go up by quite a lot as well as power and sq footage on rent for industrial fabric printing machines.

---

Now I don't know how many AB diapers get sold on average maybe someone like @ABUTonyUK could chip in with a rough figure on how many they sell each month or perhaps whether or not they sell 5,000+ bags every month. Given most AB diapers are in bags of 10 (about £3 for materials) a £20 price for that would mean only needing to sell 4,132 bags per month to meet the running costs.

I also get that all this working out is built around a company owning and producing everything and many AB companies may simply be renting time on an existing machine owned by someone else so costs may be a lot lower for them. It also means that if they do meet that sales target they start making £14-£17 per bag in pure profits.

But it is still quite easy to see why many companies (especially ABDL ones) are charging much higher prices when you consider that many ABDL's may only wear 1 or 2 a week, some maybe 1 a day, some maybe even only 2 or 3 times a month etc. If they have to sell thousands of bags a month to make running costs alone and one bag could last 40% of their customers for a month or 3 they need to increase their prices to make up for it.

You're forgetting the part where this all comes from China at stupidly low costs throughout....

 

[PadPhilosopher]

Yo

You're forgetting the part where this all comes from China at stupidly low costs throughout....

China isn't as cheap as you're thinking on custom run stuff.

 

[LittleRascal]

China isn't as cheap as you're thinking on custom run stuff.

Agreed but it's not equal to £83 + p&p per 40 he forgot to account that you only actually get 10 per bag if you got 20 we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

[Crinklesounds]

It's all well and good doing the number crunching and fact finding, but in the end of the day it's us the consumer that buys these nappies, and if they keep hiking up the prices to ridiculous levels we'll simply stop buying them.

I've only bought one pack of Tinimals, just to Road test them, and yes they are good and I like the design, but it's the cost that's stopping me buying any more.

NRU are a good company, but not a patch on Diaper Minister in terms of their variety. Just a shame that it's the shipping costs that you have to incur when buying from them.

 

[Belarin]

While I appreciate you going through all the numbers, it is all largely irrelevant as no abdl brands manufacturer there own products, 99% of it comes from china, which is also having labour and materials price increases, alot of the price increase is forced by shipping and transport.
It would be interesting to see if 'onshoring' starts to become a trend with abdl manufacturing happening locally as a way to actually cut costs and increase flexibility

I did mention at the end that most ABDL companies are probably renting time on an existing machine owned by someone else which would probably be cheaper for them as they have a little less overheads, however...

The material costs were already considering lower prices in other parts of the world.

Even in doing so they still have to rent a warehouse to store their products since the company making the diapers for them won't want them hanging around their own warehouse, this would probably be a bit cheaper since they can use a smaller space, so down from £7,500 p/m to maybe £4,000.

As you pointed out, they also have to pay to transport all their products from the factory in china to their warehouse in the UK/USA/wherever which will mean large amounts of space/weight on a container ship as well as additional import fees to get through customs.

They also may not need to pay as much for staff and utilities, since they don't need so much power or as many staff to run it. But my estimates on staffing there were already very conservative and also didn't include the fact that different staff might be on different wages (management/owner etc.) instead assuming everyone involved was on min wage.

However they will still be paying in a way for all of it because the company making the diapers is still going to need to make enough to keep running and is also going to want to make profits, by renting time on their machine out it means they cannot produce their own brands in that time or even brands for other companies renting from them who may need larger orders as they have a bigger customer base (i.e. medical brands), renting of time on their machine needs to be high enough to cover their own costs, so they will have divided things like maintenance, land costs, labour, utilities etc. into cash needed per hour for rental.

Sure things are a bit cheaper in China but for example in 2019 average industrial space rental was 44.3 yuan per sq meter per month which for a 900 sq meter building works out about £4,473. looking at agents now the price varies a lot by region but is still around or higher up to 90+ yuan per sq meter.

So some things may be cheaper there yes but given you now have to import and store your own products before you can even sell them is not going to make it much cheaper, especially for a niche market like this where order sizes are smaller (most companies renting machines will charge less per hour the more you need them to make).

Yo

You're forgetting the part where this all comes from China at stupidly low costs throughout....

It's really not that much though, see above. Many things may be cheaper (staff wages, utilities etc.) but that all gets countered by the fact you still need your own warehouse to store for distribution and then to pay shipping fees and import fees on that much product raising costs back up.

Even then, if owning/renting a diaper manufacturer in a country like China could reduce the costs by 50% (not gonna happen) you would still need to sell 2,509 bags every month just to meet running costs at £20 for a bag of 20 or 2,066 for bags of 10 at £20. Again considering the fact that for AB diapers around 50% of your customer base may well only buy 1 bag a month, just look around here at past posts for how many people only wear once or twice a week or less, or as is quite often the case people who wear a lot more (once a day - 24/7) who will mostly use medical brands that are cheaper only buying AB diapers as a luxury.

Agreed but it's not equal to £83 + p&p per 40 he forgot to account that you only actually get 10 per bag if you got 20 we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Actually I didn't forget if you read the 3rd paragraph from the end I point out that selling bags of 10 means you still need to sell 4,132 bags at £20 instead of 5,018.

All of that working out also was based off creating a medical style plain diaper akin to a Tena. if you add additional costs to create something for ABDL's (more SAP and wadding, thicker plastic backing, scents, printed designs) costs again go up.




Now I didn't work it all out to "support" companies charging crazy amounts for their diapers, I agree the costs are getting ridiculous, I did it to show there is a lot of money that goes into the production of them.

I hear a lot of people whinging abut it saying thing like those companies must be making a fortune and why can't they be cheaper, well the fact is they aren't making fortunes, turning a profit sure or they wouldn't be doing it, but most customers simply don't realise just how much it actually costs to make a product like this.

And saying that we should stop buying and boycott them because of prices doesn't help either, what actually needs to happen is for more customers to buy larger amounts on a regular basis as this will allow ABDL companies to produce them a bit cheaper (either themselves or by renting time) and also provide a guarantee that they can sell far more than enough each month/year to meet their costs, then they can reduce prices or increase pack sizes knowing that they will still comfortably make enough to keep running.