Basic Colgate 100ml toothpaste tube

coylemj

I can't use any of the fancy toothpaste flavours because the coloured stripes go all foamy with my electric toothbrush. The result is that I only buy the basic Colgate white toothpaste, the box is almost all red so it's easy to find on the supermarket shelf.



It used to be €1.49 in Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt but today is priced at €1.99.

The same tube is 99c in the pound shop in Dun Laoghaire.

bluebell1

The one in Dunnes will have an EU address. The one in the Pound Shop may not...... or it may have a sticker covering on the back with an EU address. Some of the products without an EU address may be sourced in the Far East or North Africa. That accounts for the price difference.

Retailer

bluebell1 wrote: »

The one in Dunnes will have an EU address. The one in the Pound Shop may not...... or it may have a sticker covering on the back with an EU address. Some of the products without an EU address may be sourced in the Far East or North Africa. That accounts for the price difference.

I agree. As someone who sells this product I'm offered non eu versions of it and eu versions. Even this in rarely able to sell the non eu versions of it for 99c and make a profit unless I buy hundreds/thousands of them!

sandin

Its quite simple, the discount shops take tiny margins on branded products to get you into the store and buy high margin product. However as the discount shop is buying in the grey market, there's no guarantee of constant supply.

A store like dunnes has to buy off colgate / authorised distributor to ensure continuation of supply.

Discount shops are great for toothpaste, shower gel, shampoo, soaps and other stuff like that - but you have to accept that the same brands / type won't always be available but in my book, most brands are very similar.

ejmaztec

It would be interesting to find out if a chemical analysis has been done on the grey area products to see what the difference is, if any.

rubadub

ejmaztec wrote: »

It would be interesting to find out if a chemical analysis has been done on the grey area products to see what the difference is, if any.

There was a documentary a few weeks back, think on BBC about "the secrets of poundland". It had some makeup or some sort of cosmetic going cheap and the manufacturers said they had not made it in years, so the stock would be very old.

Many items were smaller, you see this in euro shops here, bars like dairy milk can be a little smaller, sometimes broken multipacks. Some bars never seem to change size, like bounties.

I couldn't believe my ears when in the documentary some woman from a government agency or something was saying this practice could be illegal! one example was poundland were selling say a 180g jar of nutella for €1, and the tesco had a 200g of nutella for €1. This sounded bizarre to me, that trading standards or somebody could prevent manufacturers making varying pack sizes of the same product.

They did show a window cleaner which they said was deceptive, the smaller poundland bottle was actually taller and narrower. But I still cannot ever imagine a manufacturer being stopped from selling it.

They were really presuming all customers are complete idiots unable to determine good value for themselves, I found it quite offensive.

Toothpastes probably have a use by or best before date on them. I would guess chemically they are the same. They price to different regions. My local eurospar has 5% heineken brewed in holland, intended for the scottish market. This sits alongside the Irish 4.3% brewed in holland, but the Irish one is more expensive, -no doubt Heineken charge more to distributors here since its a more popular beer in Ireland.

EDIT: found the documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhhVGUvrQs