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I was wondering how many brands of solid surface most of you sell. I am now selling Avonite, Corian, Hi-Macs, Staron and considering Meganite. Isn’t it somewhat of an internal battle whether to sell one product, so that you get a better price because of quantity, or to offer the customer a wider range of colors?
Avonite
Corian
Formica (if I absolutely have to)
Hi-Macs
Gibralter
Staron
Meganite
I would sell Affinity, but I haven’t tried it yet.
Same with Dovae and that wood-grainy stuff that’s good for vanity work.
Norm, I can’t worry too much about volume, and I tell the manufacturers that. If they want me to show it, I will. The price will be whatever the price will be, and if the customer buys it, great, if not, they will get a different brand.
Tom
We offer Staron, Corian,Hi-macs,Mystera, Formica. Will be doing a job in Affinity in about a month or so.
Norm, we offer Avonite, Staron, Hi Macs, Formica, Dovae, Mystera (if the damned man will ever deliver the samples), and Pinnicle. Lions share is Avonite and Staron. Yeah, a good disributor program will make sales lean their way. We use a multiplier, 2.5 to 3 times the sheet stock price, so a buck a square foot cheaper translates into 2.5 to 3.00 square foot savings for the customer. Also, the free frt policy helps and less than three sheets shipping charges sometimes makes the sale to to one distributor over another due to batching shipments.
Main thing is color for most women, if you don’t have it, they will go elsewhere.
Al, the only problem I see with a multipler of sheet cost to arrive at a sell price is, your either screwing yourself, or your customer. When you can buy white at 1/3 of what some of Avonites Polyesters cost, does it really cost you three times as much to fabricate those? Or does it cost 1/3 the cost to do white? Seems what happens is you sell alot of the low cost product and very little of the higher cost products.
Also if your doing commercial work, specs will drive what product you fabricate to some extent. Obviously its better for the fabricator to sell one brand, one color. Then scrap is almost totally eliminated, but thats unrealistic. I sold the products I got service from. The product that helped me, the company that was getting the specs etc. As I have said before, Loyalty is a two way street. All I ever asked was if I sent a customer to a fabricator, that fabricator should try and sell my product. If they don’t find anything they like in my line, then sell them whatever they want. If a shop trys to change a spec on me, I will not reffer anyone to them again.
Norm,
I currently am set up with Avonite and Wilsonart. Although, with the exception of Corian (and I may be working on that soon) I could probably be set up tomorrow with whoever the client likes. My volume doesn’t really warrant being called on by reps so I have very little brand loyalty. I’ve got samples from 5/6 suppliers.
I picked up Wilsonart first because they were the first to call me back. I pursued Avonite after hearing from some of you.
Chris
For all of you Corian CFI’s, how much trouble did you have signing the CFI agreement? They are the only manufacturer which requires one. It basically states that if Dupont is called for a repair on a top that you did, and they find that it was fabricator error, according to their repair person, then they will send you a bill for the repair. Now this coincides with their ten year warranty. I know the way to sidestep this is to tell the customer to call you if there is a problem. Now you know why they have the best warranty in the industry, because you are it.
Norm,
That was a tough one to swallow. I have found out since signing the first one about 14 years ago that if you don’t give them problems, you will be left alone. That part did not end up bothering me as much as the non-promote clause, which has been either eliminated or ignored, and the publicity requirements. I can understand guidelines on use of logos and copy material, but metatags? Good grief!
I’m not sure, but I signed agreements for almost every brand unbtil the mid nineties, I think. Avonite has us as a CMF, whatever that means. (Cheif Mother …?)
Tom
Norm, Think about this one. After I would not sign their agreement, I later talked to a guy at the expo that had been selling their product for a long time. He got screwed under some rebate program they had, plus he started having trouble with a series of jobs failing on their sinks, 5 or 6 in a row. Each time the first question was “what do you think the homeowner did to crack the sink?” Then the second statement was “you must have created stress in the installation and that is not covered” That was his last purchase.
It seems under their senario, they could always blame the fabricator and never pay a claim.??
Norm W. wrote
For all of you Corian CFI’s, how much trouble did you have signing the CFI agreement? They are the only manufacturer which requires one. It basically states that if Dupont is called for a repair on a top that you did, and they find that it was fabricator error, according to their repair person, then they will send you a bill for the repair. Now this coincides with their ten year warranty. I know the way to sidestep this is to tell the customer to call you if there is a problem. Now you know why they have the best warranty in the industry, because you are it.
Norm:
Here’s a bit of DuPont history for you. Somewhere in the late eighties or so, DuPont decertified everyone. They only recertified shops that fabricated Corian as a main business. They lost 50% of their fabricators, but their warranty claims plunged 80%. Instead of fabbing his own, Johnny General Contractor was forced to sub out his Corian work to people who knew what they were doing. I’ll bet the poo-bahs at Corian now aren’t aware of this history, as they change executives as often as I change my socks, or they wouldn’t have started the new DIY program.
In the seven years I was a DuPont CFI, I had two warranty claims. I would not allow the warranty agent, a local competitor, to assess the job. I took the distributor rep to the failed cooktop cutout with the fabrication manual. He saw the two matched perfectly and realized it was customer abuse. I fixed it anyway and they credited my account. I can’t remember the other claim, but the bottom line is I never got a bill.
If you fabricate by their book, you will not have genuine warranty claims, period. You will have idiot customers.
I recently did repairs on a pre-decertification Corian job. Cooktop cut out with a jig saw with no radiused or sanded edges or high strength cooktop reinforcements, overheated white seams, no 3″ seam offsets in corners, no radius in corners, wood sandwich stacked front edge, etc, etc. This job is a perfect example of why they took the actions they did. It is no exaggeration to say that had they not, the solid surface business would not exist as we know it. Consumers would not have tolerated this crap and rightly so.
Joe
P.S.
I agree completely with Wags, however, I will fabricate/do anything for money. Oh yeah, it’s gotta be legal now too.
KC,The rebate program has caused some issues with a few fabricators, but if you looked at the conditions you signed onto, they were pretty straight with it. A fellow fabricator used to call it his ‘refund for over payment’. I thought that was a good line, and stole the crap out of it.
Joe is right though. Follow their fab rules (which got ever longer with time), and you not only had no trouble with a claim, you didn’t have too many. The exception was all those Gageneau cooktops and ranges that always cracked the heck out of the stuff.
The only time I ever got screwed on a claim was by Wilson Art. I will not sell their sinks, if I can avoid it.
Now, getting paid by some brands for warranty work? That’s a different story.
I recently did repairs on a pre-decertification Corian job. Cooktop cut out with a jig saw with no radiused or sanded edges or high strength cooktop reinforcements, overheated white seams, no 3″ seam offsets in corners, no radius in corners, wood sandwich stacked front edge, etc, etc. This job is a perfect example of why they took the actions they did. It is no exaggeration to say that had they not, the solid surface business would not exist as we know it. Consumers would not have tolerated this crap and rightly so.
Joe, I still have one of the old manuals that shows belt sanders and sabre saws as part of the standard tool kit. Maybe Mory can use it for his class at the expo?
When your sent out on a call, and find that the remodeler mad the top upside down, it was getting ridiculous. Those were the wild west days in this industry.
Tom
[QUOTE]Tom M wrote
Joe, I still have one of the old manuals that shows belt sanders and sabre saws as part of the standard tool kit. Maybe Mory can use it for his class at the expo?/quote]
Wow. You are old, dude. Excuse me, you’ve been in this business a very, very long time.
Joe
Hi-Macs, Corian, Staron, Avonite, Gibraltar, Formica SS, Affinity (one job), and some weird stuff that a customer brought in for me to fabricate that I should find out more about next week.
Al,
Years ago I priced using a multiplier like you mentioned but I realized I was making less money on some products doing the same labor. Now I factor the material in with a mark-up and the labor which is the same for all products into a sq ft price so I make the same money on labor and the customer pays the difference for the higher priced material. I also have an up charge for the colors that require more labor. I am not saying your way is wrong, this is just how I have evolved.
Shane
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