bob the goat
11-02-2005, 03:04 PM
As I have mentioned before, I work for a premium furniture company. One of the main functions of my job is to quote custom furniture, and to help people design their special furniture in a way that we can build, and if possible, build cheap.
I think I just did a good thing.
Yesterday I received a request for a really off the wall thing, basically they wanted a laminate conference table with an edge like your kitchen counter, where the laminate rolls down off the edge in a rounded contour. We can not do that. I told the rep, NO. She came back and asked why. I explained that it was outside of our manufacturing capabilities to make a laminate edge, we can only make laminate flat, with a wood edge. I quoted that. She came back and told me that I quoted it wrong, and that I needed to quote it with the plastic edge. She said that we did one before, and that we need to do another. After a few hours of research I tracked down a company that we outsourced the creation of a prototype table once (which was the one that she was talking about). At this point the rep called again, so I informed her that I had just tracked down the vendor, and was about to call them to request a quote. She said “how much is it?” I said “obviously you are not aware of the quoting process, the prices comes after the quote, not before?” With her infinite powers of observation she said “well, once it is quoted how much is it going to be?” I said I was not sure, but it was defiantly going to be more expensive. I told her that vendor quotes usually take a couple of days to get back. She proceeded to call me 5 times today asking if it was done yet. I finally got the quote back from my vendor and laughed.
Our cost on one of the tablea that we were going to make ourselves was $5807. The table top that our vendor quoted us (with all of the up-charges that we put into it) came out to cost $2777. I said that there is no way that I was going to give her a cheaper price for the tables that I was so adamant that were going to be much more expensive. So, I charged them $6112 (I added a random amount of $302, just to make it more than the previous quote). I told her when I sent the quote that “I was surprised that the quote came in as cheap as it did.” (Which is the truth). There were 9 different items on the quote that received this special top. When all was said and done, I calculated what I should have charged them, and subtracted it from what I actually charged them. I had charged them an extra $17,195 for their entire order. They were so happy to “get that good of a price” that they cut a check today.
Damn I wish I was on commission. Something about getting an extra 17K of pure profit makes me smile on the inside. (that is 1.5% of the profit that the company made last year, and that is ignoring the profit within the tables themselves…this is just the un-necessary markup)
I think I just did a good thing.
Yesterday I received a request for a really off the wall thing, basically they wanted a laminate conference table with an edge like your kitchen counter, where the laminate rolls down off the edge in a rounded contour. We can not do that. I told the rep, NO. She came back and asked why. I explained that it was outside of our manufacturing capabilities to make a laminate edge, we can only make laminate flat, with a wood edge. I quoted that. She came back and told me that I quoted it wrong, and that I needed to quote it with the plastic edge. She said that we did one before, and that we need to do another. After a few hours of research I tracked down a company that we outsourced the creation of a prototype table once (which was the one that she was talking about). At this point the rep called again, so I informed her that I had just tracked down the vendor, and was about to call them to request a quote. She said “how much is it?” I said “obviously you are not aware of the quoting process, the prices comes after the quote, not before?” With her infinite powers of observation she said “well, once it is quoted how much is it going to be?” I said I was not sure, but it was defiantly going to be more expensive. I told her that vendor quotes usually take a couple of days to get back. She proceeded to call me 5 times today asking if it was done yet. I finally got the quote back from my vendor and laughed.
Our cost on one of the tablea that we were going to make ourselves was $5807. The table top that our vendor quoted us (with all of the up-charges that we put into it) came out to cost $2777. I said that there is no way that I was going to give her a cheaper price for the tables that I was so adamant that were going to be much more expensive. So, I charged them $6112 (I added a random amount of $302, just to make it more than the previous quote). I told her when I sent the quote that “I was surprised that the quote came in as cheap as it did.” (Which is the truth). There were 9 different items on the quote that received this special top. When all was said and done, I calculated what I should have charged them, and subtracted it from what I actually charged them. I had charged them an extra $17,195 for their entire order. They were so happy to “get that good of a price” that they cut a check today.
Damn I wish I was on commission. Something about getting an extra 17K of pure profit makes me smile on the inside. (that is 1.5% of the profit that the company made last year, and that is ignoring the profit within the tables themselves…this is just the un-necessary markup)