Why We Do Not Have Retail Distributors

I have been asked a few times if we have agents or distributors in other states.  The answer is unfortunately no.  There is a reason for this and it’s not on our side.  In the past I have tried to approach other distributors with the idea to sell that way rather than directly online and the reality is that all of them mark up goods 2-3 times.  There is a perceived value of what people will spend on a trolley and for the retail outlets to obtain their margin they need to source a product that they get that maximum margin with the smallest investment. 

Our trolleys are cast aluminium which are not pressure cast but gravity cast so they require a little after casting processing.  We then machine them, and powder coat them. 

Our wheels are from Taiwan and use a “better than average” shielded bearing.  This is superior to the normal polyurethane wheels and are light years away from the black plastic caster wheel.   Our margin for the 34cm wheel (the largest selling trolley) is 25% which is a decent manufacturers margin only.  We wont go into tooling and such as it’s even more long winded

I have done a bit of research to back this claim up.  The 2 pictures below are a trolley you can get out of Alibaba.  And you can see the cost per piece (ex works) is only A$4.49 .  Now you have shipping and duties (if applicable) but we have then too as we come out of Malaysia.