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Posted by David Sherman on Friday, April 24, 2009 at 10:27:26 :
In Reply to: Re: Square washers-prices posted by Rick on Friday, April 24, 2009 at 09:26:28 :
I'm sorry, I don't have my notes any more. I'm thinking that stock items were priced by the thousand, with a 1000 piece minimum, and even then they weren't all that cheap. For the ones where they still had the tooling but would have to make a special production run, I think the minimum quantity was more (tens of thousands?) but there was no tooling charge. I pretty much gave up when they said that for some of the sizes I needed, the tooling had been scrapped, but they could re-make it if need be. I can't even remember how they were going to charge for that -- a flat tooling charge and a low price per piece, or a very large minimum order and a higher price per piece. I also checked a few other companies that claimed to stock a huge inventory of fasteners, but couldn't find anyone with the sizes of square lock washers I needed.
I do know that the prices, even if I ordered tens of thousands of them was such that I couldn't retail them all that much cheaper than Tom's doing, plus I'd be sitting on a massive inventory for a very long time. Then probably somebody would find a whole pallet of them for next to nothing when cleaning out some old guy's shed, and I'd be stuck with mine forever. I seem to remember quantity prices in the 10 cent to 40 cent range, which, multiplied by maybe 100,000 washers total comes out to some real money. The China method is probably the only way to get the cost down, and from what I hear about dealing with China, you really have to go there in person and visit the factory that's going to be making your thing.
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