You're both right -- it's a matter of definitions.

My wife used to be a buyer at Carson Pirie Scott, a major retailer in
Chicago. She used to talk about "markups" in this way and it drove me
(a math major) nuts.

Suffice to say that it was COMMON in her business for "markup" to refer
to the amount added to the price, as a percentage of the FINAL price.
If a price were doubled, math majors and other normal people (!) would
call that a 100% increase; she and everyone down at CPS would call that
a 50% markup.

(By the way, for other responders who mentioned taxes: there is no
reference to tax anywhere in the original post.)

-- Kevin Killion



wrote:

Here's my view. Say I have a product with my cost of $100.00

I want to add 28% to that. I think I should end up at $128.00.

My math is simply $100.00*1.28 = $128.00 [DECIMAL FIXED]

However, I have had someone else tell me that I'm wrong and need to do
the following.

First. 100-x=y
Second. 100/y=z
Third. A*z=$$$.$$

So,
First. 100-28 = 72
Second. 100/72 = 1.38888889
Third. 10*1.3889 = $13.89

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