How to become a merchant?

[southcoastboile]

Say you had the buying power does anyone know if there is any criteria you need to meet to be able to buy directly from people like magna clean/Adey, grasslin, Drayton etc?

do you have to have a shop/unit?

 

[SimonG]

You are gonna need some storage.

 

[brum]

As above if you have storage and funds available and buy in reasonable size amounts they will rip your arm off.However some manufacturers req you to become a reg stockiest wb spring to mind

 

[Kev the gas]

Manufacturers limit the amount of people they supply, it simply isn't in their interests to have loads of customers.
Why have loads, when you can get away with a select few. Keeps the price in some sort of control for them.
Even British Gas have to buy their boilers through merchants, then get rebates back from the manufacturers.
Have you the finances/storage and balls to buy an artic load of programmers ect ?
If it was easy you would see loads of small independent plumbing and heating merchants like the old days.:wheelchair:

 

[Ermintrude]

We buy from wholesale and it's not hugely cheaper

 

[Ray Stafford]

Say you had the buying power does anyone know if there is any criteria you need to meet to be able to buy directly from people like magna clean/Adey, grasslin, Drayton etc?

do you have to have a shop/unit?

You would need immense buying power to get the big brand manufacturers to supply you direct. Mostly they would expect you to deal with their distributors. However there are some manufacturers that will deal directly with relatively small merchants, particularly in the plastics and bathroom sector.

It would be very difficult to operate without premises, and indeed a forklift truck. The whole point of a merchant is that they buy in large quantities (relatively) and sell in smaller quantities. Tricky to do that if you dont have storage space and material handling facilities.

Also, you would have to stop being an installer to be taken seriously. It is possible to be both installer and merchant, but only in a relatively minor way, and expect quite a large number of suppliers to refuse to deal with you.

It goes without saying that you need quite a lot of capital and a good credit rating. To open a full service Plumbers merchant probably requires £100,000 per outlet, plus another £100,000 credit line for a couple of years. (In addition to supplier credit) More if if you plan fancy showrooms etc.

However, there are no exams and no secret handshake required. In the old days, it helped to be a member of the BMF (Builders Merchants Federation) but I don't think anyone cares much about that these days.

 

[kris]

Think the main criteria is to be a big fish, we are all just tadpoles

 

[Ermintrude]

Need to have big balls to open credit accounts for custards. Some are serial bankrupted but have others to open credit accounts and various trading platforms . One paving company up here is owned by a taxi driver ( who never actually drives but makes £150k) never pays up always bust and recently tried it on with jewsons to the tune of £40k

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Need to have big balls to open credit accounts for custards. Some are serial bankrupted but have others to open credit accounts and various trading platforms . One paving company up here is owned by a taxi driver ( who never actually drives but makes £150k) never pays up always bust and recently tried it on with jewsons to the tune of £40k

That's rotten man, too honest we are

 

[zzzjim]

Discounts may depend on taking on "Servicing responsibility" ... or NOT
( What my local Macro offered was an eye opener )

 

[southcoastboile]

Thanks for the replies