# Finding Percent Loss - word Problem

Question

A retailer sold toys at a regular selling price of 25% greater than the retailer's cost to buy the toys. If the retailer reduces the regular selling price by 80%, what is then the loss on each toy sold as a percent of the retailer

What I did:

assuming retailer's cost =100 then, regular selling price = 125 and after 80% reduction the regular selling price will be 25

But how to find the loss on each toy sold as a percent of the retailer ?

What does that actually mean. Not able to comprehend it

In your example, it means, if the retailer (let's say he) bought the item for 100 and sold it for 25, then the loss is 75. What percentage of 100 is 75? It would be $75\%$

A good idea on percent change problems is to think of each step in terms of, "What one value can I multiply by to achieve this change?"

So, "25% greater" means "$\times1.25$" "Reduced by 80%" means "$\times0.2$"

So, in your problem, you could write it as $$x\times1.25\times0.2=0.25x$$ $0.25x$ is a loss of $75\%$ from $x$

• that was helpful..thnx :) Oct 23, 2015 at 6:30

I don't know why it is complicated. The retailer bought each toy for X and sold each for X/4 (as you told). Therefore he loses 3X/4 for each toy which is 75%.

1. retailer's cost = 1 (100%)
2. retailer's regular price = 1*1.25 = 1.25
3. retailer's sale price = 1.25 * 0.2 (i.e., 1 - 0.8) = 0.25
4. loss = (0.25-1)/1 = -75%