Morning all,
From my own experiences along the years, I would make these comments –
All Locksmith Wholesalers work a Discount Band, if you spend X amount per month or per purchase you will get X discount. They do not all have the same pricing structure for every item, some favour various areas more than others, so what you are looking for is consistancy in pricing, you may decide to buy all your multi-points from Duffells, buy all your key blanks from NW Keys, your tools from Nigel Rose etc etc, and vary your supplier for the products that you want, but at the end of the day your own profit margin is dependant upon what you sell the product for, gaining 1 or 2 pence when purchasing a product is pointless when you can charge almost anything that you wish keeping as close as possible to the RRP for the product. [remember that you can loose more than 1 or 2 pence in the cost of fuel in a traffic jam]
When starting out you may wish to give all your customers a 17.5% discount equaling the vat, this will still give you a profit and give a valued discount to your customer. On the other hand, if you are not of that mind, you may not offer a discount ever , this is your decision.
You are more likely to get a personal service with a better understanding of your requirements with smaller vendors. Is this not true with your local shop? They know your face and they welcome you into their shop whether you buy a cabbage or a weekly shop? But will the giants like Tesco treat you in the same way? Only on the surface.
If, by getting a personal service, you feel that your £ is well spent, then stand by your preferences. Why? Because your £ not only buys the product, it also buys the service, and if the service that you get makes you feel that your £ was well spent, then good, but if you feel as if they are indifferent towards you, and it matters to you, then look elsewhere for service. Yes, it is an old fashioned attitude, and yes, you may ‘possibly’ pay an extra .0045% more on something, but how you feel at the end of the day when you purchase anything is what matters, whether it’s for 5 key blanks or a key machine. Building up a relationship with your supplier will be important, having trust in him to understand what you are asking for when you yourself may not know the part number or the ‘proper technical widget by it’s proper name’, his years of knowledge are of immense value and he knows his stock better than we will ever know, that’s his business.
How you see your dealing with your wholesaler is up to you, what is right for you may not be right for another locksmith. We are all different and have different values.
I may be old fashioned in some of my points of view, however it matters to me how and where I spend my £, I would like to say that in business we have a very good communication level with our suppliers and those that I use offer very good discounts and extremely good personal services, so take from that what you will.
But remember that we are all different, and what pleases one person may not please another. When you take out a customer account with any of the suppliers they will be pleased to communicate with you. As you are in London or thereabouts, why not drop in and introduce yourself to many of them? This will tell you what you want to know, and if you cannot visit them - then ask for the Reps to visit you. If you like their attitude – then go with them.
As for getting help for jobs with other experienced safe engineers you could do well to put up a post on a forum called:
http://www.safe-engineers.net - as a guest - asking for assistance from a safe engineer to do a job for you, or look on the SAVTA listing for a member in your area:
http://www.savta.org , just ideas to investigate, contact them and see how you get on with them.
Wishing you all the best with your new business.
regards
Chris B
