Jewsons, like Travis, are much more focused on trade accounts. A lot of walk-in trade is really small beer to them; after all how much profit is there in ten sheets of plasterboard and some screws over, say, a 16 tonne load of structural softwood? I've worked on trade jobs where Travis-Perkins was one of two or three main timber suppliers, and where their prices were acceptable, but this was down to our contract manager having negotiated a decent discount.A good deal at Jewsons, I'd print it out and frame it!
Builders merchants don't seem to bother about the price, I suppose because for tradespeople it's just an overhead passed on to the customer...
Really? See my previous comment. I'm not saying that from your perspective it isn't the case, but from my (trade) perspective things are very different... but there is a massive misconception among the public that builders merchants are cheap.
Selco deliver. Even on smallish sites it simply isn't feasible or affordable to send someone out to collect materials (in fact it is very counter productive to collect anything) - instead you ring the contract manager and he or his staff find the materials for you and arrange delivery. So no need to ever visitSelco seem alright, prices on everything but I don't know how they keep going, absolutely massive one down here but always absolutely dead inside.
The company I work for has just entered into an agreement where we projected spending upto £1m PA with them and for that we get a 70% discountJewsons, like Travis, are much more focused on trade accounts. A lot of walk-in trade is really small beer to them; after all how much profit is there in ten sheets of plasterboard and some screws over, say, a 16 tonne load of structural softwood? I've worked on trade jobs where Travis-Perkins was one of two or three main timber suppliers, and where their prices were acceptable, but this was down to our contract manager having negotiated a decent discount.
Trade accounts are always negotiated against defined ranges of products and purchase volumes. IMHO the big trade suppliers (or rather their sales reps) aren't that interested in accounts which aren't turning over volumes less than £40k to £50k. You'll find the smaller accounts get smaller discounts. Walk in and ask for a price, and well, it's pot luck
As to "thick builders who can't look stuff up on the internet", how about builders who have negotiated a reasonable discounts with a major supplier which has stock available immediately for collection and who are also giving 30 days of credit - as opposed to probably paying more, immediately, for products of potentially dubious quality? Just because you can't get a good price out of Travis et al you shouldn't assume the same is true for bigger fish
Really? See my previous comment. I'm not saying that from your perspective it isn't the case, but from my (trade) perspective things are very different
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