Now that the Internet has made pricing so transparent, it gets even
more frustrating to walk into a local supply house and realize that
you are not getting the same deal that contractors get.

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?

- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

Register as a business, get the proper tax ID number and do the reporting
required by licensed businesses. Some suppliers require a minimum purchase
per order or per year to qualify.
I can take you to places that will not even let you in the showroom unless
you are a contractor or are with a contractor.

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

Varies from 10% to 40% Can vary with volume also.


- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?
No


- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

Varies Use the spell checker. Its "faucet"

In article , Jeffrey J. Kosowsky
wrote:

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

Do a decent volume of business with them over a period of six to 18
months so that they know you're really a contractor and not just
somebody looking for a ride.

But hey. I could be wrong.

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
Now that the Internet has made pricing so transparent, it gets even
more frustrating to walk into a local supply house and realize that
you are not getting the same deal that contractors get.

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?

- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

This is Turtle.

What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product and not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get a
wholesale warehouse to sell to you as a customer / John Q. Public at
contractor's rates and the other contractors find out about it. Your going to
cost that warehouse about a 100 times in lost sales to real contractor that they
would ever hope to sell to you. If they sold you say $500.00 of wholesale goods
they would loose about $50,000.00 to $500,000.00 worth of equipment that the
contractor would have bought without knowing about the sale to you. The
Wholesale suppliers would have to be water headed to sell to you with that big
of a lost they are looking at.

Nothing is free in this world ! Go get you a contractor licences, Contractor
Liability insurance, and a Sales tax number and start buying wholesale. You can
then brag about being a wholesale buyer and everybody will be happy. I buy maybe
$300K of wholesale goods in my HVAC business a year and get a pretty good
discount. If you could buy say $10K of good from them a year. They would give
you pretty close to my discount on goods. The more you buy the more the discount
grows.

The only other choice it to suck up to a contractor and let you buy off his
account for a discount.

TURTLE

"TURTLE" writes:
What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product
and not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get a
wholesale warehouse to sell to you as a customer / John Q. Public at
contractor's rates and the other contractors find out about it. Your
going to
cost that warehouse about a 100 times in lost sales to real contractor
that they
would ever hope to sell to you. If they sold you say $500.00 of wholesale
goods
they would loose about $50,000.00 to $500,000.00 worth of equipment that
the
contractor would have bought without knowing about the sale to you. The
Wholesale suppliers would have to be water headed to sell to you with
that big
of a lost they are looking at.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard, more
reminiscent of the old Soviet system than the current Internet-enabled
world with ever more transparent and competitive pricing.

Why would the contractor care (other than indirectly) if I saved a
couple of dollars on a project that I am going to do myself anyway,
particularly if I could always get the items at the same or better
pricing on the Internet or maybe even at Home Depot?

In fact, I would turn your argument on its face -- if a contractor is
getting good service, selection, and pricing at his/her current
supplier, why would he ever consider risking pricing and service on
$500,000 of spend just because I saved a couple of dimes on some
switch or a couple of bucks on some fixture.

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.

Nothing is free in this world !

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.

Finally, from a "moral" viewpoint, I have always thought it to be
borderline sleazy that contractors make an additional *hidden* margin
by marking up the price of materials. I am happy to pay a fair and
competitive hourly labor rate and to pay a delivery charge on
materials, but I fail to see why a contractor should make an
additional hidden profit by marking up materials due to the old "cozy"
relationship between suppliers and contractors. I now use the Internet
all the time to challenge contractors on marked-up materials pricing
thereby avoiding being gouged and getting a better sense of my labor
vs. materials cost. In fact, this is no different from the uproar over
hospitals marking up the price of Tylenol (beyond the cost of goods
and administration) or government contractors marking up the cost of
toilet seats.

Go get you a contractor licences, Contractor
Liability insurance, and a Sales tax number and start buying wholesale.
You can
then brag about being a wholesale buyer and everybody will be happy. I
buy maybe
$300K of wholesale goods in my HVAC business a year and get a pretty good
discount. If you could buy say $10K of good from them a year. They would
give
you pretty close to my discount on goods. The more you buy the more the
discount
grows.

Sounds like you have a case of bitterness here. If I can get
contractor-like pricing without doing the above than all the power to
me. Since you weren't going to get that business from me anyway, it
doesn't really hurt you, except perhaps your ego that some "layman"
like me is getting competitive pricing without belonging to the
"guild".



The only other choice it to suck up to a contractor and let you buy off
his
account for a discount.

That is of course another tried-and-true alternative

Well I guess you know it all......so why did you even ask????? If you think
Home Depot has good pricing you are living in a fantasy world.

just my .02

cm


"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
"TURTLE" writes:
What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product
and not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get a
wholesale warehouse to sell to you as a customer / John Q. Public at
contractor's rates and the other contractors find out about it. Your
going to
cost that warehouse about a 100 times in lost sales to real contractor
that they
would ever hope to sell to you. If they sold you say $500.00 of wholesale
goods
they would loose about $50,000.00 to $500,000.00 worth of equipment that
the
contractor would have bought without knowing about the sale to you. The
Wholesale suppliers would have to be water headed to sell to you with
that big
of a lost they are looking at.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard, more
reminiscent of the old Soviet system than the current Internet-enabled
world with ever more transparent and competitive pricing.

Why would the contractor care (other than indirectly) if I saved a
couple of dollars on a project that I am going to do myself anyway,
particularly if I could always get the items at the same or better
pricing on the Internet or maybe even at Home Depot?

In fact, I would turn your argument on its face -- if a contractor is
getting good service, selection, and pricing at his/her current
supplier, why would he ever consider risking pricing and service on
$500,000 of spend just because I saved a couple of dimes on some
switch or a couple of bucks on some fixture.

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.

Nothing is free in this world !

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.

Finally, from a "moral" viewpoint, I have always thought it to be
borderline sleazy that contractors make an additional *hidden* margin
by marking up the price of materials. I am happy to pay a fair and
competitive hourly labor rate and to pay a delivery charge on
materials, but I fail to see why a contractor should make an
additional hidden profit by marking up materials due to the old "cozy"
relationship between suppliers and contractors. I now use the Internet
all the time to challenge contractors on marked-up materials pricing
thereby avoiding being gouged and getting a better sense of my labor
vs. materials cost. In fact, this is no different from the uproar over
hospitals marking up the price of Tylenol (beyond the cost of goods
and administration) or government contractors marking up the cost of
toilet seats.

Go get you a contractor licences, Contractor
Liability insurance, and a Sales tax number and start buying wholesale.
You can
then brag about being a wholesale buyer and everybody will be happy. I
buy maybe
$300K of wholesale goods in my HVAC business a year and get a pretty good
discount. If you could buy say $10K of good from them a year. They would
give
you pretty close to my discount on goods. The more you buy the more the
discount
grows.

Sounds like you have a case of bitterness here. If I can get
contractor-like pricing without doing the above than all the power to
me. Since you weren't going to get that business from me anyway, it
doesn't really hurt you, except perhaps your ego that some "layman"
like me is getting competitive pricing without belonging to the
"guild".



The only other choice it to suck up to a contractor and let you buy off
his
account for a discount.

That is of course another tried-and-true alternative

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
"TURTLE" writes:
What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product
and not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get a


snip



Why pay the contractors price? Why don't you find out how much the supplier
is paying from the manufacturer and ask to pay that price?

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.


Finally, from a "moral" viewpoint, I have always thought it to be
borderline sleazy that contractors make an additional *hidden* margin
by marking up the price of materials. I am happy to pay a fair and
competitive hourly labor rate and to pay a delivery charge on
materials, but I fail to see why a contractor should make an
additional hidden profit by marking up materials due to the old "cozy"
relationship between suppliers and contractors. I now use the Internet
all the time to challenge contractors on marked-up materials pricing
thereby avoiding being gouged and getting a better sense of my labor
vs. materials cost. In fact, this is no different from the uproar over
hospitals marking up the price of Tylenol (beyond the cost of goods
and administration) or government contractors marking up the cost of
toilet seats.

We don't mark up the cost of our materials. Not all contractors do.
But I understand the reasoning. Look, you will end up paying the
contractor you hire the same amount, regardless. Contractors have what
are known as fixed expenses. You know, things like licenses, liability
insurance, worker's compensation insurance, health insurance,
insurance on trucks, equipment expenses, and other overhead expenses.
These expenses must be met. Then there is labor that must be paid; yet
another expense that must be met. After all these items have been
satisfied then, and only then does the contractor pay himself. Would
it help you to feel better if the bill you received showed the price
paid by the contractor for materials as being the price paid by you
and the rest of what you seem to think of as an inflated price charged
to you as "profit?" (Although you don't know what the true profit is
since you don't know what that particular contractor's operational
overhead is.)

Sounds like you have a case of bitterness here. If I can get
contractor-like pricing without doing the above than all the power to
me. Since you weren't going to get that business from me anyway, it
doesn't really hurt you, except perhaps your ego that some "layman"
like me is getting competitive pricing without belonging to the
"guild".

Who has a case of bitterness here? Take the time to learn how to
service your own HAVC without killing yourself. Learn how to do
concrete work, framing, drywall work, electrical, plumbing, finish
carpentry, tree trimming, irrigation systems, appliance repair,
masonry, etc. There are countless things you need to know and buy when
working on people's houses. Learn all these things, get all the
required paperwork, do enough business (although you probably won't
come close to any kind of volume to warrant economies of scale
discounts) and you too can get discounts at real supply houses.

BTW, the "discounts" places like Home Depot give to contractors? That
is still higher than what real contractors pay at real supply houses.
And the materials and equipment you buy at place like Home Depot is
usually of inferior quality since they like to squeeze their suppliers
for every penny they can and charge the customer just as much as they
can get away with.


--
John Willis
(Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

It's NOT "faucet" if your first name is "Farrah".

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
. com...

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

Register as a business, get the proper tax ID number and do the reporting
required by licensed businesses. Some suppliers require a minimum purchase
per order or per year to qualify.
I can take you to places that will not even let you in the showroom unless
you are a contractor or are with a contractor.

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

Varies from 10% to 40% Can vary with volume also.


- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?
No


- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

Varies Use the spell checker. Its "faucet"

As usual, TURTLE is way out there!
"TURTLE" wrote in message
...

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
Now that the Internet has made pricing so transparent, it gets even
more frustrating to walk into a local supply house and realize that
you are not getting the same deal that contractors get.

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?

- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

This is Turtle.

What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product and
not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get a
wholesale warehouse to sell to you as a customer / John Q. Public at
contractor's rates and the other contractors find out about it. Your going
to
cost that warehouse about a 100 times in lost sales to real contractor
that they
would ever hope to sell to you. If they sold you say $500.00 of wholesale
goods
they would loose about $50,000.00 to $500,000.00 worth of equipment that
the
contractor would have bought without knowing about the sale to you. The
Wholesale suppliers would have to be water headed to sell to you with that
big
of a lost they are looking at.

Nothing is free in this world ! Go get you a contractor licences,
Contractor
Liability insurance, and a Sales tax number and start buying wholesale.
You can
then brag about being a wholesale buyer and everybody will be happy. I buy
maybe
$300K of wholesale goods in my HVAC business a year and get a pretty good
discount. If you could buy say $10K of good from them a year. They would
give
you pretty close to my discount on goods. The more you buy the more the
discount
grows.

The only other choice it to suck up to a contractor and let you buy off
his
account for a discount.

TURTLE

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

Finally, from a "moral" viewpoint, I have always thought it to be
borderline sleazy that contractors make an additional *hidden* margin
by marking up the price of materials. I am happy to pay a fair and
competitive hourly labor rate and to pay a delivery charge on
materials, but I fail to see why a contractor should make an
additional hidden profit by marking up materials due to the old "cozy"
relationship between suppliers and contractors. I now use the Internet
all the time to challenge contractors on marked-up materials pricing
thereby avoiding being gouged and getting a better sense of my labor
vs. materials cost. In fact, this is no different from the uproar over
hospitals marking up the price of Tylenol (beyond the cost of goods
and administration) or government contractors marking up the cost of
toilet seats.

We don't mark up the cost of our materials. Not all contractors do.
But I understand the reasoning. Look, you will end up paying the
contractor you hire the same amount, regardless. Contractors have what
are known as fixed expenses. You know, things like licenses, liability
insurance, worker's compensation insurance, health insurance,
insurance on trucks, equipment expenses, and other overhead expenses.
These expenses must be met. Then there is labor that must be paid; yet
another expense that must be met. After all these items have been
satisfied then, and only then does the contractor pay himself. Would
it help you to feel better if the bill you received showed the price
paid by the contractor for materials as being the price paid by you
and the rest of what you seem to think of as an inflated price charged
to you as "profit?" (Although you don't know what the true profit is
since you don't know what that particular contractor's operational
overhead is.)

I fully understand that the business only works if the homeowner
covers the cost of licenses, liability, workers comp, health, etc.
I just think it is more straightforward if that is built into the cost
of labor rather than as a hidden materials markup. After all, we all
know that if I am paying $40/hour for an assistant, that assistant
is not taking home $40/hour. However, I would prefer the price of
materials to be equal to the actual cost plus a small markup for
reasonable pickup & delivery charges.



Sounds like you have a case of bitterness here. If I can get
contractor-like pricing without doing the above than all the power to
me. Since you weren't going to get that business from me anyway, it
doesn't really hurt you, except perhaps your ego that some "layman"
like me is getting competitive pricing without belonging to the
"guild".

Who has a case of bitterness here? Take the time to learn how to
service your own HAVC without killing yourself. Learn how to do
concrete work, framing, drywall work, electrical, plumbing, finish
carpentry, tree trimming, irrigation systems, appliance repair,
masonry, etc. There are countless things you need to know and buy when
working on people's houses. Learn all these things, get all the
required paperwork, do enough business (although you probably won't
come close to any kind of volume to warrant economies of scale
discounts) and you too can get discounts at real supply houses.

What I am saying is that licenses have nothing to do with pricing in a
free market. Volume is another story, but in the current more
efficient supplier marketplace, pricing is much less sensitive to
volume than people think (as evidenced by Internet pricing and big box
stores).

I am not bitter because I trust the market and know that I have many
ways of learning the actual pricing and getting a reasonable mark-up
over cost.

BTW, the "discounts" places like Home Depot give to contractors? That
is still higher than what real contractors pay at real supply houses.
And the materials and equipment you buy at place like Home Depot is
usually of inferior quality since they like to squeeze their suppliers
for every penny they can and charge the customer just as much as they
can get away with.

I agree, but Home Depot has still forced many smaller hardware stores
and supply stores to lower the price that they charge consumers since
otherwise they will lose all the consumer business and even some of
the small-time contractor business (despite the quality issues at Home
Depot).

John Willis
(Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

"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

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 08:26:15 -0600, John Willis
wrote:

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?
snip

Something nobody had mentioned is the fact that wholesalers do not
want to deal with ignorant homeowners/DIYers buying small quantities
and all the nagging problems that come with them. Having a
contractor's license and being in business implies some level of
knowledge and/or experience in the use/application/installation of
said materials. The wholesalers are not set up to offer
help/instructions to the uninformed, inexperienced user; the big box
stores are...

The next time you need a contractor to do some work for you, buy your
parts/materials via the internet then ask him/her to install it/them.
See what kind of warranty you get on the materials. It would be my
guess a smart, savvy contractor would charge you more on the front end
to cover what he/she may be losing from his/her normal price structure
and for the possibility of having to deal with materials he/she may
not feel is best for the application at hand.

DJ

I agree that a business has to cover overheads, but many want to cover
the overheads twice over: once by marking up the materials, and again by
marking up the labor charge.

When we lived in Taiwan, I never paid labor charges to get my car fixed:
the markup on the parts covered the workers' wages. In NY I paid retail
price for the parts PLUS $90/hr. labor charge.

MB

Whether you vote Democrat or Republican today, the country will still be
run from boardrooms in the USA and elsewhere, not by your elected
representatives.


On 11/02/04 10:04 am Jeffrey J. Kosowsky put fingers to keyboard and
launched the following message into cyberspace:

Finally, from a "moral" viewpoint, I have always thought it to be
borderline sleazy that contractors make an additional *hidden* margin
by marking up the price of materials. I am happy to pay a fair and
competitive hourly labor rate and to pay a delivery charge on
materials, but I fail to see why a contractor should make an
additional hidden profit by marking up materials due to the old "cozy"
relationship between suppliers and contractors. I now use the Internet
all the time to challenge contractors on marked-up materials pricing
thereby avoiding being gouged and getting a better sense of my labor
vs. materials cost. In fact, this is no different from the uproar over
hospitals marking up the price of Tylenol (beyond the cost of goods
and administration) or government contractors marking up the cost of
toilet seats.

We don't mark up the cost of our materials. Not all contractors do.
But I understand the reasoning. Look, you will end up paying the
contractor you hire the same amount, regardless. Contractors have what
are known as fixed expenses. You know, things like licenses, liability
insurance, worker's compensation insurance, health insurance,
insurance on trucks, equipment expenses, and other overhead expenses.
These expenses must be met. Then there is labor that must be paid; yet
another expense that must be met. After all these items have been
satisfied then, and only then does the contractor pay himself. Would
it help you to feel better if the bill you received showed the price
paid by the contractor for materials as being the price paid by you
and the rest of what you seem to think of as an inflated price charged
to you as "profit?" (Although you don't know what the true profit is
since you don't know what that particular contractor's operational
overhead is.)


I fully understand that the business only works if the homeowner
covers the cost of licenses, liability, workers comp, health, etc.
I just think it is more straightforward if that is built into the cost
of labor rather than as a hidden materials markup. After all, we all
know that if I am paying $40/hour for an assistant, that assistant
is not taking home $40/hour. However, I would prefer the price of
materials to be equal to the actual cost plus a small markup for
reasonable pickup & delivery charges.

In article , Minnie Bannister wrote:
I agree that a business has to cover overheads, but many want to cover
the overheads twice over: once by marking up the materials, and again by
marking up the labor charge.

It's all the same in the end: zero markup on labor plus ten dollars markup on
parts, ten dollars markup on labor plus zero on parts, or five on each, all
add up to the same thing. The contractor has to make his profit somehow. Why
quarrel over what he chooses to call it?

When we lived in Taiwan, I never paid labor charges to get my car fixed:
the markup on the parts covered the workers' wages. In NY I paid retail
price for the parts PLUS $90/hr. labor charge.

Well, duh! Mechanics in NY get paid a bit more than mechanics in Taiwan. If
the service stations in NY adopted the same pricing structure as you describe
in Taiwan, they'd have to charge a *much* higher markup on the parts in order
to make their profit -- and then you'd be screaming about the outrageously
high markup on parts.

It's all the same in the end.

Greetings,

Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote:
Now that the Internet has made pricing so transparent, it gets even
more frustrating to walk into a local supply house and realize that
you are not getting the same deal that contractors get.

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

Ask? When I bought my first house 15 years ago I went to the local
painting supply place & local lumber yard. Both now give me a 10% discount.

You'll never get the same discount as a high-volume buyer.


--
Kyle A. York
Sr. Subordinate Grunt

from a distributor point of view he's right but exaggerated figures
pulled out of a vivid imagination - but got the point across correctly.

Hey, if some stranger walks in to the wholesale house and knows exactly
what he wants and doesn't ask some dumb how to question the counter guys are
probably going to give it to him then ask whom for... just for my home'
cash will have him assumed working in the trade and maybe asked whom he
works for to not insult him with last column pricing on some items that book
price way up there. Computer holds the key to special customer pricing
otherwise its most likely standard pricing service last column, which by the
way mostly is 50% off retail which is fine on small odd items but popular
everyday stuff way out of line.
If he takes that material home and calls a contractor to install it and that
contractor sees whom supplied the material - hell will be raised and a
wholesaler may very well lose a good customer whom will tell other
contractors - if it happens as normal everyday thing,, that wholesaler soon
will not need to worry about extending credit to the trade, which will take
a major everyday worry off their minds and can reduce inventory levels to
make the CPA happier with ratio's & watch the gross margins rise as the net
margins fall. I could go on but I'm really not related to Turtle.

"Joe Fabeitz" wrote in message
...
As usual, TURTLE is way out there!
"TURTLE" wrote in message
...

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
Now that the Internet has made pricing so transparent, it gets even
more frustrating to walk into a local supply house and realize that
you are not getting the same deal that contractors get.

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?

- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

This is Turtle.

What your asking here is how to get a contractor's discount on product
and
not
be a contractor. First let me tell you a little secret here. If you get
a
wholesale warehouse to sell to you as a customer / John Q. Public at
contractor's rates and the other contractors find out about it. Your
going
to
cost that warehouse about a 100 times in lost sales to real contractor
that they
would ever hope to sell to you. If they sold you say $500.00 of
wholesale
goods
they would loose about $50,000.00 to $500,000.00 worth of equipment that
the
contractor would have bought without knowing about the sale to you. The
Wholesale suppliers would have to be water headed to sell to you with
that
big
of a lost they are looking at.

Nothing is free in this world ! Go get you a contractor licences,
Contractor
Liability insurance, and a Sales tax number and start buying wholesale.
You can
then brag about being a wholesale buyer and everybody will be happy. I
buy
maybe
$300K of wholesale goods in my HVAC business a year and get a pretty
good
discount. If you could buy say $10K of good from them a year. They would
give
you pretty close to my discount on goods. The more you buy the more the
discount
grows.

The only other choice it to suck up to a contractor and let you buy off
his
account for a discount.

TURTLE

Ignore the beat-down by self righteous contractors-- here is how I got
the deal--FWIW.

I was replacing my roof, and called the local roofing supply company
to get a price--- I described what I wanted using general terms, they
gave me a price. I wrote down the price and model number and other
descriptions. Later, I decided to get the supplies from another
location, same company. I called them to confirm I would get the same
price, but instead of sounding like a dolt-do-it-yourselfer,
describing in general terms what I wanted, I just said (somethign
like) "I need 14 square of GAF shingles... " and went on to refer to
it using item number, etc. I found the price quoted was about 20%
less. I thought about it for a while, and figured out that they had
given me what I presume was a contractors discount, just because I
sounded like one. The next time I needed some stuff I tried the same
thing, getting the insiders model numbers from one location, then
going into another location, in my work clothes, and asking for stuff
by model number, etc.. and I got a better price. Go figure, not sure
if it works anywhere else, but for this particular store it appeared
to be an informal system, and if you looked and sounded like a
contractor you got a better price... give it your best shot.

Save your flames, if they guy didn't ask if I was a contractor, and
just assumed I was, that is on him, not me. I am not going to correct
him and ask him to raise the prices. Also, if the business relies on
this informal method of setting prices, TOUGH!

"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

"PrecisionMachinisT" writes:
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.

According to your logic, sounds like the contractor should be willing
to pay "extra" for this service relative to the DIY who is willing to
wait.

Again, your argument has nothing to do with the fact that price
competition and transparency is intensifying and thus driving down
margins which in general leads to lower spreads between retail and
wholesale pricing.

If a supplier believes he can make more profit by offering consumers
discounts and pulling business from other suppliers or from big box
retailers then he should do so.

Whether or not he has to offer different levels of service to his
business vs. layman customers is a different story and is not directly
related to relative pricing.

What I object to (and indeed what the market is inexorably
eliminating) is the sense of entitlement that certain groups feel
towards receiving preferential pricing which ends up resulting in
consumers subsidizing the profits of contractors even when they choose
to go it alone (this is analogous to the push by record labels to add
a tax to the sale of all blank media even if you choose to use it for
non-copyrighted materials).

DJ writes:
Something nobody had mentioned is the fact that wholesalers do not
want to deal with ignorant homeowners/DIYers buying small quantities
and all the nagging problems that come with them. Having a
contractor's license and being in business implies some level of
knowledge and/or experience in the use/application/installation of
said materials. The wholesalers are not set up to offer
help/instructions to the uninformed, inexperienced user; the big box
stores are...

I agree. But, this is a business decision on the part of the supplier
who needs to decide who is customer is and what is the cost of serving
any given customer segment. This is independent of the sense of
entitlement that contractors feel to receiving preferential pricing
just because they hold some government license.

The next time you need a contractor to do some work for you, buy your
parts/materials via the internet then ask him/her to install it/them.
See what kind of warranty you get on the materials. It would be my
guess a smart, savvy contractor would charge you more on the front end
to cover what he/she may be losing from his/her normal price structure
and for the possibility of having to deal with materials he/she may
not feel is best for the application at hand.

My point exactly. Material mark-ups shouldn't be used as hidden
subsidies for contractor profits. I see nothing wrong with a
contractor charging me a fair labor rate (including sufficient profit
and overhead coverage) to install my 3rd party supplied materials.

On the other hand, unless the cost of serving me is that much higher
than the cost of serving a contractor, I don't see why when I am a
DIY, I should have to pay higher prices just because I don't belong to
a certain guild with government charter (read: license).

The advantage of today is that the consumer has choice. I can go in to
a supply house aware of the true pricing (via the Internet) and have a
real (or implicit) conversation with the merchant. In the end, in
return for convenience and service, I may choose to pay a somewhat
higher price than the Internet price or the high volume contractor
prices, but since I have other choices, the merchant knows that he can
no longer get away with charging me the old 50% mark-up.

(rotation slim) writes:
Ignore the beat-down by self righteous contractors-- here is how I got
the deal--FWIW.

I was replacing my roof, and called the local roofing supply company
to get a price--- I described what I wanted using general terms, they
gave me a price. I wrote down the price and model number and other
descriptions. Later, I decided to get the supplies from another
location, same company. I called them to confirm I would get the same
price, but instead of sounding like a dolt-do-it-yourselfer,
describing in general terms what I wanted, I just said (somethign
like) "I need 14 square of GAF shingles... " and went on to refer to
it using item number, etc. I found the price quoted was about 20%
less. I thought about it for a while, and figured out that they had
given me what I presume was a contractors discount, just because I
sounded like one. The next time I needed some stuff I tried the same
thing, getting the insiders model numbers from one location, then
going into another location, in my work clothes, and asking for stuff
by model number, etc.. and I got a better price. Go figure, not sure
if it works anywhere else, but for this particular store it appeared
to be an informal system, and if you looked and sounded like a
contractor you got a better price... give it your best shot.

I have been doing a very similar thing by using the Internet as my
pricing guide to make sure pricing is ballpark correct.

Save your flames, if they guy didn't ask if I was a contractor, and
just assumed I was, that is on him, not me. I am not going to correct
him and ask him to raise the prices. Also, if the business relies on
this informal method of setting prices, TOUGH!

Agreed. This sense of contractor entitlement is ridiculous. People
like Turtle object even if I get a discount on a job that I plan on
doing myself anyway where the discount I get doesn't take away any of
his profit!

From:

(Jeffrey J. Kosowsky)

I agree. But, this is a business decision on the part of the supplier
who needs to decide who is customer is and what is the cost of serving
any given customer segment.

Jeff, this is what most supply warehouses do...they sell exclusively to
contractors because it is actually easier...the *average* weekend warrior
*needs* a box stoor like home depot or lowes where as a contractor needs a
supplier...most supply houses are no frill warehouses...they stock materials
and a select list of other items...that contractors use and buy...they don't
need large displays, and they don't need to have a bunch of different things
because the customer want a red tapeline, instead of a yellow one....

having read the entire thread here i still don't understand what the uproar
is over a contractor getting a "contractor's rate" at a supply house....it
doesn't mean you have to hire that contractor....you can do your research on
pricing, then get bids....but i can all but promise you one thing, telling a
contractor that his "price" for materials is too high is not going to have him
scrambling to lower his price to make you happy....in fact most contractors
have three price levels....the price for a turnkey job, the price for the job
if you wanna watch, and then the price(the highest by the way) for the
homeowner that *thinks* they know more about the job than the contractor
does....the third price will be roughly three times more than the first
one...contractors don't really want to do jobs for "problem" customers and will
gladly throw a "kiss-off" bid to them...
-------------------
Chris Perdue
"I'm ever so thankful for the Internet; it has allowed me to keep a finger in
the pie and to make some small contribution to those younger who will carry the
air-cooled legend forward"
Jim Mais
Feb. 2004

From:

(Jeffrey J. Kosowsky)

This sense of contractor entitlement is ridiculous. People
like Turtle object even if I get a discount on a job that I plan on
doing myself anyway where the discount I get doesn't take away any of
his profit!

you surely misunderstand what TURTLE is saying....the statement about
contractors leaving their supplier because they start giving John Q. Public the
same pricing has nothing to do with you saving a buck on a project that you
want to do yourself...it has *everything* to do with you wanting to supply your
own materials for a contractor, then he in turn has to raise the "labor" rate
to cover the operating expenses that are normally covered by "material markup",
and you screaming "thats not fair, George J plumber down the street only
charges xxx for labor"(even if George P had given you a quote for a turnkey
job, not a labor only job)....

Everyone here seems to be ignoring the value to the supply house of having a
pro come in, buy whole boxes of things at a time and signing for them. When
this is all handled by the computer the paper flows and costs are reduced. If
the counter man is wasting time answering dumb questions, breaking boxes and
handling cash it simply costs more. Of course volume decides what column the
contractor gets priced in. I suppose Harry Homeowner wants the same price as a
contractor who rolls a few million bucks worth of supplies off the dock.

Let me translate that. "what kind of lies can I tell to save a few dollars
by falsely representing myself"??

--

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
www.mormons.com


"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
"PrecisionMachinisT" writes:
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.

According to your logic, sounds like the contractor should be willing
to pay "extra" for this service relative to the DIY who is willing to
wait.


Nope, it doesnt.

Because wholesaler dont got to have an extra six employees ****ing around
answering stupid questions.

And if you screw around and make me wait in line, Im gonna go someplace
else--I know what I want, you have it and if you want my money then you give
it to me now and quit wasting my time.

When I buy things that arent shipped in, I phone in advance and go to the
will-call counter.......

Very very rare will I even go to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, precisely because
when I do, I find their products are often as not substandard and
overpriced.

End of Story.

--

SVL

Do you take your eggs to the resteraunt to have them cooked?
"Joe Fabeitz" wrote in message
.. .
It's NOT "faucet" if your first name is "Farrah".

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
. com...

"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message

- Any tricks on how best to get "contractor discounts" from the local
suppy house?

Register as a business, get the proper tax ID number and do the
reporting
required by licensed businesses. Some suppliers require a minimum
purchase
per order or per year to qualify.
I can take you to places that will not even let you in the showroom
unless
you are a contractor or are with a contractor.

- How big are the discounts typically to their parallel off-the-street
retail (not list) price?

Varies from 10% to 40% Can vary with volume also.


- Is the discount typically the same for plumbing vs. electrical
vs. building materials vs. gardening/landscaping, etc.?
No


- What about for "finished" fixtures (e.g., lamps, fawcetts,
cabinets) vs. basic materials (e.g., wire, pipe, lumber)?

Varies Use the spell checker. Its "faucet"

On 11/02/04 11:39 am Doug Miller put fingers to keyboard and launched
the following message into cyberspace:

I agree that a business has to cover overheads, but many want to cover
the overheads twice over: once by marking up the materials, and again by
marking up the labor charge.

It's all the same in the end: zero markup on labor plus ten dollars markup on
parts, ten dollars markup on labor plus zero on parts, or five on each, all
add up to the same thing. The contractor has to make his profit somehow. Why
quarrel over what he chooses to call it?

When we lived in Taiwan, I never paid labor charges to get my car fixed:
the markup on the parts covered the workers' wages. In NY I paid retail
price for the parts PLUS $90/hr. labor charge.

Well, duh! Mechanics in NY get paid a bit more than mechanics in Taiwan. If
the service stations in NY adopted the same pricing structure as you describe
in Taiwan, they'd have to charge a *much* higher markup on the parts in order
to make their profit -- and then you'd be screaming about the outrageously
high markup on parts.

It's all the same in the end.

I was thinking the other way round: that charging $90/hr for labor
should mean that they don't have to charge retail for the parts -- just
as Jeff (to whom I was reponding) said.

MB

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:32:07 -0600, "Rich"
scribbled this interesting note:

Do you take your eggs to the resteraunt to have them cooked?


I once saw a fellow hand a couple of eggs to the server at a Braums
Ice Cream store for them to put in his milk shake! So yes, sometimes
people take their eggs to the restaurant to have them prepared!:~)


--
John Willis
(Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 14:04:13 -0800, "PrecisionMachinisT"
scribbled this interesting note:


Very very rare will I even go to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, precisely because
when I do, I find their products are often as not substandard and
overpriced.

Sounds like you have the same experiences I have at those places!

I like a certain brand of work jeans. I work in them. I can go to
Wal-Mart and buy them for $19.00 and stand in line all day (seems like
no matter what time of day you go into a Wal-Mart it is always dark
when you emerge!:~) or I can go to a different store almost a close by
and pay $21.00 a pair and be able to go in, find my jeans, wait
perhaps for a clerk to wait on one person at the most, pay, and be out
of there in under ten minutes.

Yep, we think alike when it comes to big box stores!:~)


--
John Willis
(Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

John,

Braum's has a pretty limited area. Where are you?

Dan in Oklahoma City


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)




"John Willis" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:32:07 -0600, "Rich"
scribbled this interesting note:

Do you take your eggs to the resteraunt to have them cooked?


I once saw a fellow hand a couple of eggs to the server at a
Braums
Ice Cream store for them to put in his milk shake! So yes,
sometimes
people take their eggs to the restaurant to have them
prepared!:~)


--
John Willis
(Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

"TURTLE" writes:
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.

Earth to Turtle -- clearly you didn't bother to look at Home Depot's
financial statements. While results for individual items may vary,
Home Depot's gross margin according to their latest 10K filing is just
shy of 32% (not 50%), giving them an operating margin of
10%. Considering that their buying power allows them to get better
pricing than other supply houses let only the price that wholesalers
sell to contractors like yourself, I find it hard to believe that your
retail pricing is on average 20% better than Home Depot. Now that
doesn't mean that there aren't individual items where you can beat
Home Depot on price, just that I don't believe that you can buy from a
local supply house, add your own markup and still sell parts on
average 20% cheaper than Home Depot.

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.

Great I will make a deal with you. When I need HVAC parts, why don't
you sell them to me cheaper than my best Internet price and you can
make even more profit than you do now since I won't ask you to install
the part or warranty it.

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.

This is a ridiculous statement. Contractors would be needed for installation
and repair and would rightly price their labor to cover their overhead
plus profit. Only a small fraction of the population in my neck of the
woods would ever even think of doing a minor repair themselves let
alone a major HVAC installation.

If anything, the clearer delineation between the true cost of parts
vs. labor may lead to more work for contractors since consumers would
have more faith that they are getting what they paid for.

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.

A complete non-sequitur.

The decline of the repair business has more to do with the fact that
the fast pace of innovation, the declining costs of production, the
relative high cost of U.S. repair *labor* (not parts) and our overall
throwaway mentatlity and newer-is-better culture encourage consumers
to prefer buying a new one to repairing the old one.

In the market economy that I live in, consumers whether consciously or
unconsciously on average make an economically (near) optimum decision
that says it is not worth repairing the old.

In fact, the only time it often makes sense to repair is when you are
a DIY since the major cost of repair is labor not parts. Which brings
me back to the original point that efficient market economics calls
for more transparently separating the costs of labor and materials so
that consumers can make rational choices about how to spend their
money.

Jeff

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 18:36:15 GMT, ender (Jeffrey
J. Kosowsky) wrote:

"PrecisionMachinisT" writes:
And if a contractor had to always walk around for 40 minutes with no
snip

According to your logic, sounds like the contractor should be willing
to pay "extra" for this service relative to the DIY who is willing to
wait.
snip

Without getting too personal, might I ask what you do for a living
Jeffery?

DJ

"PrecisionMachinisT" writes:
"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in message
...
According to your logic, sounds like the contractor should be willing
to pay "extra" for this service relative to the DIY who is willing to
wait.


Nope, it doesnt.

Because wholesaler dont got to have an extra six employees ****ing around
answering stupid questions.

And if you screw around and make me wait in line, Im gonna go someplace
else--I know what I want, you have it and if you want my money then you give
it to me now and quit wasting my time.

When I buy things that arent shipped in, I phone in advance and go to the
will-call counter.......

Very very rare will I even go to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, precisely because
when I do, I find their products are often as not substandard and
overpriced.

End of Story.

First, you are clearly humor impaired, since you missed the sarcasm
and humor in my comment.

Second, as I have said all along, the price to consumers should have
nothing to do with who has a license and who doesn't. Rather it should
depend on a combination of factors such as volume efficiencies and the
cost of serving different customer segments. Then the supplier needs
to decide what combination of service levels he wishes to offer and
which combination of segments he wishes to target so as to maximize
his profit. Some may choose to sell mostly to consumers (Home Depot),
others may choose to target mostly contractors, others still may
choose to target both.

If a supplier doesn't want my business then he may charge me more or
may not provide the service I need -- on the other hand plenty of
others may find me profitable to serve at a price not much higher than
the contractor discount. For sophisticated suppliers, the fact that a
contractor may feel jealous is unlikely to impact this decsion.

EMOVE (Chris Perdue) writes:
From:

(Jeffrey J. Kosowsky)

I agree. But, this is a business decision on the part of the supplier
who needs to decide who is customer is and what is the cost of serving
any given customer segment.

Jeff, this is what most supply warehouses do...they sell exclusively to
contractors because it is actually easier...the *average* weekend warrior
*needs* a box stoor like home depot or lowes where as a contractor needs a
supplier...most supply houses are no frill warehouses...they stock materials
and a select list of other items...that contractors use and buy...they don't
need large displays, and they don't need to have a bunch of different things
because the customer want a red tapeline, instead of a yellow one....

I agree. Again, I was only objecting to the argument that contractors
have a god-given right to lower pricing and that somehow if I get a
low price for my DIY repair then I am either putting contractors out
of business or causing them to riot against their suppliers.

EMOVE (Chris Perdue) writes:

From:

(Jeffrey J. Kosowsky)

This sense of contractor entitlement is ridiculous. People
like Turtle object even if I get a discount on a job that I plan on
doing myself anyway where the discount I get doesn't take away any of
his profit!

you surely misunderstand what TURTLE is saying....the statement about
contractors leaving their supplier because they start giving John Q. Public the
same pricing has nothing to do with you saving a buck on a project that you
want to do yourself...it has *everything* to do with you wanting to supply your
own materials for a contractor, then he in turn has to raise the "labor" rate
to cover the operating expenses that are normally covered by "material markup",
and you screaming "thats not fair, George J plumber down the street only
charges xxx for labor"(even if George P had given you a quote for a turnkey
job, not a labor only job)....

You have it exactly backwards. The usual situation as pointed out by
another poster is that many greedy contractors charge a market rate
for labor and then hide additional profit margin in the cost of
materials thinking that the consumer is too dumb to notice and will
only look at the hourly rate. Well, lucky for us consumers, the
Internet is making pricing more transparent and making it easier for
consumers to weed out overpriced bids.

When I am given a quote for labor and materials, I want the quote to
represent just that. Materials is the cost of materials (plus
associated expenses) and the labor is the cost of labor (including
overhead and profit). I then look at both numbers and try to determine
if they are reasaonable. If someone is not giving me reasonable or
honest numbers, than how can I trust anything they say (including how
they measure time

Just the opposite to your claim, I would much prefer to go with the
guy with honest materials costs and higher labor rate than the
smooth-talking guy with marked-up materials numbers and a slightly lower
labor rate (although as pointed out above, the reality is that he will
probably also come to you with a higher labor rate claiming that he is
"more skilled")

Jeff

In article , Minnie Bannister wrote:

I was thinking the other way round: that charging $90/hr for labor
should mean that they don't have to charge retail for the parts -- just
as Jeff (to whom I was reponding) said.

It doesn't matter how you look at it, they're going to make their profit one
way or another. Why argue about what label they choose to put on it?

(Greg) writes:
Everyone here seems to be ignoring the value to the supply house of having a
pro come in, buy whole boxes of things at a time and signing for them. When
this is all handled by the computer the paper flows and costs are reduced. If
the counter man is wasting time answering dumb questions, breaking boxes and
handling cash it simply costs more. Of course volume decides what column the
contractor gets priced in. I suppose Harry Homeowner wants the same price as a
contractor who rolls a few million bucks worth of supplies off the dock.

Not ignored at all -- in all my posts, I have acknowledged that volume
allows for some discount, however the impact of volume is much less
than people think given the increasing efficiency of retail sales and
the supply chain behind it. Second, even contractors don't buy all
that much volume in the grand scheme of things. Third, many if not
most contractors don't buy all that much volume of any single part;
rather, they come in every day (or sometimes several times a day)
making a series of relatively small purchases -- the advantages of
volume are mostly about single part/single transaction volume rather than annualized transaction
volume.

"Stormin Mormon" writes:
Let me translate that. "what kind of lies can I tell to save a few dollars
by falsely representing myself"??

I prefer to think of it as:
What can I do to prevent from being ripped off by suppliers and
contractors who think I am just a "rich", naive yuppie who is ripe for
being ripped off

Since when does having a government license or a contractor business
card give one some legal or god-given right to better pricing?

If I act like a contractor and don't waste the time of the sales clerk
any more than a real contractor, then why should I not get similar
pricing? (after adjusting perhaps for some volume discount that true
high volume contractors may deserve)