"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
John Willis writes:
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?

I have no problems with discounts -- the "market" will typically
decide the most efficient and profitable way for suppliers to
price. The only thing I was opposing was the entitlement atitude that
somehow a license entitles a contractor to a god-given right to
special pricing unavailable to homeowners. Volume is obviously one
reason for better pricing, but the usediscounts depends on the volume, on the
margins, on the volume efficiencies, and on the relative power of
buyer vs. seller.


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.

WalMart and HomeDepot are only examples of how purchasing and pricing
power is shifting. Obviously, I wasn't saying one should buy
specialty electrical supplies from Walmart


This is Turtle.

Earth to Jeffrey , If you think Home Depot is giving you a big discount on
equipment such as HVAC stuff. I run a HVAC contracting business and sell at a
30% mark up on parts. Home Depot sells at a 50% mark up and if I sold at Home
Depot's prices I would have to go up on prices by 20% higher. Whatever Home
Depot sells for $1,000.00 -- I sell for $850.00 or so.

I see now that I step out here in a bunch that does not know what Wholesale
prices really is. What the bunch here has been told by the internet hvac
suppliers and Home Depot as a super discount wholesale pricing is a joke. What
you can buy off the internet and pay shipping on the stuff with no warrenty , I
sell for the same price or lower and warranty it with free labor for a year.
What the bunch here calls a wholesale prices is what I call Retail prices.

If the public could buy at real wholesale prices. There would be no more hvac
contractor and everybody who works on them would be just Do it yourselfers and
if you had a real problem with the freon system to try to fix. You would just
have to go buy a new one for all the real tech that could fix it would be in
other businesses. Now look at Repair of refrigerators and freezers. The only
ones left is Sears and sellers of the Refrigerators and freezers. If it gets
outside the warrenty limits. It become too costly to repair because of the only
ones that repair these freezers and refrigerators is the sellers of them and
they have driven the price to the moon to repair them so you will want to buy a
new one from them when the warrenty runs out. I'm the only one in town that
knows how to really repair refrigerators and freezers but I only work for
customers that I do their HVAC work for and just don't need the extra
refrigerator business. The repair of refrigerators and freezers are far harder
to do than HVAC work because of all the electronic controls on them now days. I
think a refrigerator is hard to work on and a 20 ton rooftop Package unit is
easy as hell to work on.

TURTLE