ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion Supply House prices vs Home Depot

Willfescon,

It sounds like you're doing a lot of service work. You may want to try something that I did a few years ago for similar reasons. I wasn't putting together large enough orders to quote them all individually and was buying from whichever supply house I happened to be closest to at the time so wasn't really doing much volume with any single supplier.
I identified my high usage items and their total expected usage over time and asked my suppliers for a fixed per unit and also a quantity (per carton etc.) price quote based on that info. The idea being that they would honor that price for a period of time i.e., three months to a year and in return I would give them something close to the stated volume of business.
I received quotes from three different suppliers for this and one of them actually gave me some pretty decent pricing over what I had been paying over the counter. I did have to watch their invoices though as they would sometimes invoice at a higher than negotiated price. They will tell you how often they will want to re-quote based on their cost change history and will of course exclude things like wire.
This also made estimating jobs a little easier.

So true....I always manage to grab the one item out of 500 on the shelf that doesn't have a bar code label on it. Kind of like the Visa/MasterCard TV commercials!

Mahlere:
I stand corrected re: Rahway...probably hit wrong key...
Haven't shopped there in 4-5 yrs......was a Cooper reg up until I closed shop 5/07

Take care

hotline...no worries...i'm in the mix everyday and I can't keep up...we rarely use cooper anymore...ever since sonapar took them over, it's been all downhill...

When I worked for a Fortune 50 company, Grainger would give us a Large discount. As I recall, around 30 to 40%.

Wifey, the bean counter, does all the running around for the bits and pieces lately. She's got the time to call both the suppliers and the big box guys to find out who has what for our guys on the job. - And more importantly to her - THE PRICE.

I'm lucky to have her because the only salary I have to pay is my own mental well being at the supper table every night while being "briefed" on just EXACTLY what happened during the day. And what we paid for stuff!

Mostly the big box doofusses can get it kind of right for supply of material, but if one of our guys needs a particular part that the big box guys don't normally handle, the poor guy on the electrical supplier desk gets the "action" from a dedicated gopher/bean counter/grunt/ delivery person and better find it - in her words "QUICKLY".

I know most of the rest of you guys don't have a wife that's that supportive (if you are lucky enough to have one like that), but it's saved us all kinds of time over the last few years and our journeyman and apprentice guys are just super happy to see wifey drive up to the site with the material they need within a few minutes of asking for an item they don't have. - (Like that new 200 amp Siemens panel that is replacing an old FP someone bought in the US 50 years ago).

The only thing that gets me PO'd though, is that she usually brings a bunch of coffee and doughnuts for the guys and they all have to sit around and yakk for 20 or 25 minutes about "things" with her about the jobsite while our customer is waiting for us to get their work done.

Bonnie does that every day, even if they don't need parts too.

Works for us, I guess. At least our guys are hanging around.

Overall,I like it because she probably got the best price too. It's likely saved me a few $10G bills over the last couple of years.

A gopher might be in your future? It's well worth it in my opinion.

Just my two cents... I was always under the impression that copper was a commodity and price was driven by the market? I don't know HD could get a better price then a supply house weather they bought volume or not. I do know that when they sell copper, like gasoline, they are selling for the price it is going to cost to replace the product, not what they had paid for it.
As far as supply houses, I like the convience of faxing orders to them and having 95% accuracy of what I was looking for.
The supply house is also great for 24 hour service. I have had little luck getting help in HD when they are open let alone 2 in the morning and I need something for an emergency.
We do pay a little more at the supply house but I feel that it is justifyable for the service, as mentioned, that they provide.
Thats all

Safety First!

Discount hardware stores operate with varying profits for different items. The wire and conduit are cheap, but the connectors, boxes and mudrings are more expensive. If you buy everything at a hardware store, or everything at a supplier, the supplier will save you money. I use a supplier that drops my order at my shop. I save an hour every time I use my supplier. The hardware stores carry common items that sell the most, but few of the odd items that we need regularly. If we don't use electrical suppliers they'll go out of business and we'll go out of business with them.

Dave

Sales volume is different for Home Depot and Lowes when compared to a supply house- they may be able to mass negotiate as a corporate giant, but individual stores don't necessarily sell that much. When prices rise and the big box is still cheap, they're quickly bought out. But when the prices drop, the big box often lags behind... until they're left with 250' reels of romex and 2" copper pipes running twice what it's going for at the supply house, and it just sits there for weeks or months until some poor unknowing DIY sap buys it.