Basement Project Progress
I finally had a breakthrough on the basement project. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing a video here next week.
The next step in the project requires that I pour an extended setting self-leveling mortar over the radiant heating elements glued to the slab. I’ve been unable to find a retailer who was willing to sell me the only suitable product I could find for the job: Custom Building Product’s LevelQuik ES. I finally found a vendor in the Baltimore/Washington corridor who’s willing to sell to a lowly Do-It-Yourselfer like me. The major problem finding a vendor: many companies would only sell to contractors with a business license and MHIC number. The obvious consumer choice: Home Depot, wanted more than 20% over my current vendor’s price. Once the deal is done with this vendor, I’ll post a review here of my experience with them.
I’m sure there are good reasons not to sell to the general public. But, for the life of me, I can’t think of any of them. I would think it makes more sense to sell to the general public at a high retail price and provide discounts to contractors.
What do you think? Have you run into this same problem? Can you explain the phenomenon to the rest of us?
February 6th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I feel your pain on not being able to buy materials from ‘contractor only’ places. Must one have a license to buy products? I understand needing a license to do certain work, but I’m just looking for the products…
February 7th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Honestly, I think it probably relates 100% back to the bottom line. Number one, if they can sell in bulk, they can buy in bulk and get cheaper rates to create higher profit margins; selling one bag to one guy creates a slippery slope, maybe…?
Also, we got in a situation where, long story short, we discovered that our city’s building permit laws are geared entirely toward making profit for contractors. It means they can charge exorbitant rates and make what could be a small job a bigger one to fulfill “code.” I wonder if it’s a similar thing– selling to the public would be taking business away from their number one customer; it benefits their client, who will buy that along with a ton more stuff than you or I would, if they make it so that’s the only way the public can access the product. They all make more money.
I dunno. Some possibilities.
Everyone’s in bed together, sometimes…
February 8th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Corey: Not sure myself. I can understand needing a license to perform certain types of work (and potentially for buying certain types of equipment/tools — MAYBE).
Amalie: You make a good point about buying in bulk. In my case, I was buying 60 bags of this stuff (A full pallet) which would be as a much as a builder would buy for a house. Also, folks didn’t generally cite any minimum buy, only that you had to be a licensed professional.
It’s unfortunate when a city’s laws garner higher profits for industry instead of protecting the consumer. That’s true here in Balto. Co. MD where you can’t get an electrical permit AT ALL unless you are a licensed electrician — where in all the surrounding counties you can get a limited homeowner’s permit.
I think wholesalers don’t sell to the public simply because they don’t want to compete directly with their retailers — but I think that could be largely mitigated as long as the public had to buy at a highly inflated price (so that there was still plenty of profit-room for the contractor).
The world may never know… I’ll do some research and post a follow-up.
Fred