The Essence of All Consumption Upgrades

It’s simply a case of paying too much. When merchants compete fiercely for high-end clients, they end up monitoring each other, undercutting each other, and driving up quality in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Someone might win your initial order with three times the quality and service for five times the price. But then everyone gets envious—everyone wants to capture that huge profit margin. So they flip the script and start stacking on quality relentlessly until costs approach your five-times baseline.

This principle is called reverse bidding: as long as you leave enough profit margin and set a sufficiently large procurement scope, you’ll ultimately receive the quality and service that matches your price point.