Hi Beth…
And List…
What about all of them folks that advertise as selling “Wholesale to
the Public…”……
I do Industrial Distribution for the day job…
We’re one of those “middle men” some folks gripe about…
Look…we pay our dues…
My outfit sits at about $1.5 Million in inventory at any given
time…
We will sell to most anyone…don’t really have a show room…
We do have a Will-Call counter…
But if you don’t have a resale license we’ll hit you for the
Governor’s share, aka sales tax… We have to…the tax man does
audits…
If you buy a large quantity, you’ll get a better price…
You cannot buy 10 1/4-20 hex nuts from me…you’ll have to buy
100…
If you buy 100,000 at one shot…I can get you a good deal…!
My customer can order a box of hex nuts, 2 shovels, a case of
Aero-Kroil*, 144 drill bits in 12 sizes, some Snow Melt for his
sidewalks, a couple of files, a Milwaukee Hole Shooter, a Craftsman
15/16 deep socket, a dozen 1/4 wire rope clips and a case of toilet
paper…all on one PO…
One transaction for a whole bunch of what might seem to be unrelated
stuff… Unless that’s what it’s taking to keep your plant running…
This makes makes life a whole lot easier for my customer…
Is my outfit a wholesaler…?
Naaaawww…
I’m a distributor…a middle man…
There’s outfits that wholesale commodities to my company…
It’s a chain of supply thing…
My job is to make it easier for those folks in industry that have
wants and needs…
I’ll muddy the waters even further…
Master Lock is a manufacturer…My outfit a distributor for Master
Lock…
800 Pound Gorilla Customer comes to us for two kinds of padlocks,
have to be non-magnetic…entirely…One kind has to all have the
same key… The other has to have different keys…(keys
non-magnetic also)
When an MRI machine fires up, ferrous items can become
projectiles…
Sourcing, Purchasing, Environmental (aka safety), and End User of
customer all had input**…
Got everybody lined up…initial order…6,000 padlocks to go
World Wide…
Sold them maybe another 8,000 since, between the two types…
Am I wholesaler…or a retailer…? My sale was to the end
user…but to their distribution center in bulk…which sends them
out in much smaller quantities around the World…
What’s the whole point of my rant…?
There’s this big chain of distribution of whatever…applies to
whatever and whichever your looking at…be it MRO supplies, or
the jewelry industry…
The thing for anyone to look at…is where on the chain you want to
or have to be, to get what you want to get done, done…
The folks on the chain (wherever they are) want to sell to you…
It’s what they do…
But there’s rules…
Gary W. Bourbonais
A.J.P. (GIA)
*About once a year, one of the major players in industry MRO (they
take turns) comes out with something that "is as good as"
Aero-Kroil… Folks what use it more or less tell them to shove
it…
Think of WD-40/Tri-Flow/CRC on steroids…
Except this stuff has been around as long as, if not before
WD-40…
**The research lab tried to make the padlocks go magnetic…and
they were nothing ferrous, except maybe the lock pins…? The
environmental guy clued me into this… I have no idea what they did
to them poor padlocks…
As far as we are in state of technology, they could not get said
padlocks to act magnetic…
Yeah, I know, by it’s very nature, etc., it can’t happen…
But them engineers really tried…