Sanchez shook her head. “Customers recognize that we sell a perishable product and that the supply of fish fluctuates from day to day. They expect prices to vary. The prices of fruits, vegetables, and flowers change all the time, don’t they? A few years ago, coffee bean prices plummeted when growers realized they’d be better off selling inventories than watching the beans rot. Since then, coffee prices have gone up again. No one seems to object when the prices of chicken, beef, or pork rise and fall because of changes in the marketplace. I’m not willing to leave money on the table by refusing to react to supply-and-demand fluctuations.”

“But why do you want to cut prices so drastically? Why not just offer customers a 10% discount? I can see us doing that in the winter, when sales are slow, anyway,” Hargrove pointed out.

Sanchez shook her head again. “It won’t work, Jim. Our warehouses are so full that it’s going to take a lot more than that to make a difference. And with $9 million tied up in the new ships, you know we won’t be keeping them in harbor. Our inventories are going to keep growing unless we do something radical.”

“Selling product at a loss is radical, all right,” Hargrove muttered grimly. On many of its products, Neptune wasn’t making enough profit after manufacturing costs to sustain a deep price cut. In fact, the company’s margins had already shrunk by 10% in the past year because of rising costs and growing