"John Willis" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 13:31:13 GMT, ender (Jeffrey
J. Kosowsky) scribbled this interesting note:

Globalization, the Internet, and increasing competition are changing
the face of business forever, making pricing more competitive and
transparent than ever before. Now that pricing can be looked up and
compared on the Internet, it is a lot harder for suppliers to price
discriminate between retail and wholesale customers except on the
basis of true volume efficiencies (e.g., buying pallets or cases) or
when the purchaser has dominant purchasing power (think Walmart). The
differential between wholesale and retail pricing erodes as big box
retailers push down the retail price while Internet-suppliers (and
others) allow individuals access to contractor-like pricing.
Those who can't adapt to this reality are not going to survive.

Then I suppose it is ok with you when we get lower prices on shingles
when we buy by the truck-load as compared to buying by the shingle
like you can at Home Depot?

Each supplier is free to decide what discount is required to maximize
its profit (volume x margin). If a supplier believes that selling to
enough people like me at a discount brings them more profit and
prevents me from going to the Home Center or Internet then by all
means they should sell to me at or near the contractor discount. If
they believe that they need to give you more of a discount to retain
your business or that you are cheaper to serve due to your volume then
maybe you will get a bigger discount. However, in this day of
multi-billion dollar purchasers (like Walmart), your power as a volume
buyer is a lot closer to my thousands of dollars a year than to Home
Depot or Walmart's purchasing power.

Wal-Mart doesn't carry anything that will help most contractors in
their day-to-day business. Even Home Depot is only marginal when it
comes to carrying good, quality product and tools. These are
"consumer" oriented stores, not stores that really cater to
contractors.


And if a contractor had to always walk around for 40 minutes with no
customer service, wait in line while other stupid peoples questions get
asked, wait for their checks to get cleared with the bank ( like at home
depot ) and all that other bull****, the contractor would be looking for
someplace else pronto.

A contractor calls in advance, he knows exactly what he wants, the
wholesaler either has it in stock or brings it in, and he puts it out on the
dock--the contractor comes along, picks it up, signs papers and in ten
minutes flat he is outa there, very little time being wasted on the whole
deal by either party.

--

SVL