Wholesalers prices away from the open forum

[Paul.M]

Not the best idea to post up prices of our materials on the open forum for the general public/customers to see etc. Good point GMES.

Any time we are talking about "how much does that cost" in the open forum, post it up in here and post up a link on the other thread.

 

[Octopus]

eh?????????

 

[Paul.M]

eh?????????

A few of us were talking on an open thread about LED mod light fittings and we asked how much did that cost you?

Dont want to post up "Well I paid £150 and charging the customer £200 per fitting." kind of thing in the open forum for our customers to find out.

One of the reasons why the Arms were set up I think.

 

[Knobhead]

If a customer can find their way on to here they will soon find the wholesalers.

 

[Octopus]

If a customer can find their way on to here they will soon find the wholesalers.

I think the description "wholesaler" is no longer relevant - the vast majority will see anything to anybody!

 

[ferg]

If a customer can find their way on to here they will soon find the wholesalers.

TBF the wholesalers will normally give Joe Public a ridiculous price.

They will then look at Screwfux or Tooltat and get a price for cheap shyte.

Given that I can normally get decent kit at the same price as the cheap garbage.
My sales pitch is that I guarantee parts and labour if I supply the better quality parts but only labour if they supply the cheaper low quality parts.

I also explain the reason why I only use decent brands.

Having said all that I think it's more than a bit daft to discuss markups in an open forum.

If challenged by a customer I justify my markup with the parts and labour guarantee.

And then there is always the golden rule

What you pay extra in parts will save you in labour

 

[GMES]

The problem with our trade is we have all become a society of bargain hunters.
You only have to go back in time when there was a chain of people and rules, ie cable companies supplied the wholesaler, the wholesaler supplied us and we in turn supplied the customer, but all that as changed i can now buy my cable direct from batt, elland etc.
And it shouldn't be like that in my opinion, because you now have wholesaler's doing the same thing direct the our customers.
I think we are all guilty of creating this way of life, a prime example is how everybody in the trade uses ebay to source cheaper tools and testers etc to beat the price of the wholesaler.
And now this as had the same knock on effect with the public, because they now look at it the same way, in their mind's why shouldn't they buy the stuff from screwfix.
I suppose the only thing we can cling to is as Ferg say's we will only warranty our own parts.

 

[Octopus]

Why would you warranty parts you haven,t bought or supplied?

 

[GMES]

Why would you warranty parts you haven,t bought or supplied?

Who said they would do that Murdoch, cause i certainly wouldn't

 

[uksparks]

I don't really see there to be such a thing as trade prices anymore, the price is the price in most shops Nd online, like others say, business is business and nobody cares who they sell to.

If a customer wants to find out how much you paid, let them, it certainly wouldn't make me revise an invoice because they said I added a quid here and there.

ersonally I don't add anything on parts, that way if they check they know I've not stung them, I obvious add any delivery charges in where applicable, but I just say parts are parts and this is the labour, take it or leave it.

 

[davesparks]

I had my friendly wholesalers price up a load of light fittings for a job, obviously I added a bit of markup and forwarded the price to my client.

Next day the wholesaler rings me up and says that they have had a customer come in and ask for a price for an identical list of parts as they have just done for me, we established that this was indeed my customer!

Needless to say the price the wholesaler quoted to them was a few quid more than teh price I quoted them

Moral of the story - It pays to make friends with and be loyal to your wholesalers. I know I sometimes pay a little more for things than if I was to shop around but then I wouldn't get all of the other benefits.

 

[Marvo]

We sometimes have the same problem for bread and butter items like containment and cable etc but even with these types of items it's unlikely the customer will get a price that's less than 20-25% more expensive than we'll get quoted because of the volumes we purchase.

Many control items such as drives and PLC's we get 50-70% discount on list prices which is what the customer will get quoted so obviously on these types of items our mark-up is substantial. The reason for this is that the wholesalers or the agents have a far higher liability when they sell direct to the end user and many point blank refuse to supply them direct. Last year we probably turned over 120 motor drives and we had 1 returned for warranty claim, selling directly to the end user would see maybe 10% or even more returned as failures.

Guess it might be different for basic domestic items, I could imagine margins would be tighter but then your profit is in the labour surely.