As I mentioned in an example above, just because you have covered all of your variable costs doesn't necessarily mean that you have the ability to cover all of your fixed costs at a reasonable sales rate. Contribution Margin Positive just means that each widget sold contributes towards fixed costs (as compared to negative, where each widget sold reduces the amount of money available to pay fixed costs), even if that contribution is one cent. So you could be positive by selling a product for $10 that has a variable cost of $9.99, but damn if you'll ever make a profit (where contribution margin * widgets sold > fixed costs).