Samples, samples, samples… Free or not to be Free? That is indeed a great question! There is no such thing as Free (lets just get that taken care of right away). If a company is offering free samples then the people who actually purchase, the regular customers are paying for the free samples. As the company simply has to add the cost of the samples back into the product sell price.
Everything is built into the product cost. If a small company buys a private jet then they will need to charge $200.00SF for the tile. Yes, that will not work. Huge companies with lots of product can spread these costs over many SKU’s (individual products) so it is not noticeable, it becomes a smaller percentage. Hence their jets.
But nothing is Free.
We do not offer free samples for one reason. We value the customers that actually order and continue to order on a regular basis too much to make them pay for the free samples of customer that may or may not buy or who are ‘just looking’. And if you are a customer that buys, believe me you do not want the cost of the “Free Samples” on your tab. How is that fair.
This is just an extreme example to try and make the point clear. A Home owner for example, who is doing a bathroom with our Venato 3×6” for $7.00 a Square Foot, let’s say we offered free samples, and 1,000 people ordered the samples and never purchased.
Now the 3×6” has to be $8.00 a Square Foot to cover that cost. Is that fair to the “only” buying customer? The customer ordering 200SF of 3×6” now had to pay another $200.00. That is not reasonable. Not to me. Not to them. They had to buy all those other people’s free samples. You do not eat dinner at a restaurant with a significant other and say to the waitress, that couple over there, I do not know them – but stick their meal on my tab.
That is how unreasonable it is to our actual customers.
So we meet halfway. The customer pays for the sample and we ship it for free, it is a compromise on a very “economic issue”.
What we want is the highest quality, best possible service for the lowest possible price for our customers – we love them! No frills no fancy cars and certainly no private jets. We live in North, GA, we work hard and very long hours (you would know if you email and get a response at 9pm) and provide a product we are proud of.
At the end of the day we go home to our families knowing we have done all we can to provide the customer with the best possible deal. We have considered every cost, negotiated everything we can to provide value. This in turn grows our business and allows us to bring more people into the team and culture of hard-work. It is not an easy job, every person has packed on the dock in 90F+ in the summer and frozen in the Winter for at least 1 year. Everyone starts there, executive or royalty. I lost 30lbs doing it. You can cancel the gym membership if you work here you no longer need it 🙂
Please let us know what you think? To candid and upfront? So difficult to know if you have offended anyone these days. Let us know sampleblog@thebuilderdepot.com
