BNNIB (Brand New Not in Box): Sarah Jessica Parker less Lovely than expected

Another bitesize post - a blogging amuse-gueule if you will - about an unusual discount item spotted in a branch of B & M (formerly B & M Bargains) in Stafford the other day. I popped back this afternoon to take a better photo and can confirm that this item, reduced from £18.99 to £12.60, is - perhaps not surprisingly - still for sale. Reduced in price, and sadly also radically reduced in terms of its missing centrepiece of a full bottle of Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely.

I always used to say that Lovely is one of the early celebrity scents that punched above its price tag. Well, that is even more the case now that this Lovely-shaped hole is valued at a mere £6.39. For 100ml! The rollerball is 10ml and the body lotion 200ml, and I cannot see how such a modest price reduction is justified...For on a purely pro rata basis the rollerball would therefore be worth 64p(!), and the body lotion just under a whopping £11.96, which is 87% more than the perfume that isn't there. That's never right.

The maths gets even more off kilter when you compare this set to one costing £9.99 and containing 3 x 10ml rollerballs: one of Lovely plus two of its flankers (Born Lovely and Sheer Lovely); it is also on sale in B & M, with all three perfumes still present and correct in the box. Each 10ml costs £3.33, much more than a tenth of the £6.39 the absent 100ml bottle is supposedly worth. And I know that smaller quantities cost proportionately more per ml, but still...even if the rollerball in the discounted gift set were worth twice 64p, the difference versus the trio set is quite stark.

There are the makings of an absorbing algebra problem here, I sense! 3 x a = £9.99, while a + c = £12.50. (where b = bottle = £6.39 = missing.) If we now decide that a = £3.33 in both sets, that leaves a value for the lotion of £9.27, but there is still no escaping from the lowball price of £6.39 for b! If anyone would like to take the full price of £18.99 and reallocate fair values to all three items that should be in there, be my guest. ;) 

And you do have to admire the sheer effrontery of the person who removed the bottle from its box. The perfume was presumably pilfered, for I cannot imagine the store allowing a customer to buy the bottle on its own, the way they usually condone my purchases of lone bottles of mineral water from a previously broached polythene multipack.

For anyone who manages to find a complete set, this is certainly a bargain..."a steal", I could almost say. 

Speaking of which, we can at least take comfort in the fact that the thief will smell lovely...;)