Pricing Paper, Plastic and Soap in Commercial Accounts
Intro
Pricing the cost of paper, plastic and hand soap can be challenging and financially risky if you don’t have a formula or historical basis for accurately estimating past or future use. The safest approaches are to let the customer order and pay for these products or to provide these products as extras or pass through cost with a slight markup cost (2% – 5%) for handling, purchasing and stocking.
If the customer is requiring these items to be included in the cost, bid or square foot price, ask them to provide or allow access to use and costing data from the current suppliers. If they are not forthcoming with this information, you will need to add an error factor (8% – 10 %) into your price to assure that you don’t lose money on providing these products.
As a last resort, your distributor or paper sales person should be able to assist you figuring out which products may fit current dispensers and in calculating pricing and use information. If you can’t use exiting dispensers there will costs associated with swapping out dispensers. An emerging trend in new, remodeled and public and heavy use restroom, is to eliminate paper towels and replace them with electric hand dryers. (more…)
