Never, Never, Never!
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Never, Never, Never!
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I put my company name on stuff that's subcontracted out to me if I think it might bring me some business that I want. I do ask first, so its ethical, and it never has been a problem.
Dave
Epilog 35 W 12x24
Adobe Illustrator
Dell PC
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I act as both a wholesaler and a retailer, so my business faces this. It's a common scenario actually.
The answer is to not go after your wholesaler's clients. Go after new business. However, if people find you naturally, and the business is worth it, then you need to take it. Any middleman needs to understand there are times when this will happen, but they need to know that you respect their services as a middleman and won't try and take their business once they've established it.
If the middleman offers services and client interfacing, and is good at what they do, they'll garner enough loyalty that most clients won't try and go around them.
Tiered pricing is a good way to keep clients from coming to you directly. Only offer wholesale pricing to your middleman. End clients should have no financial incentive to come to you directly. The only time they should be coming to you directly is if service was bad enough that they need to find you directly. As for the lost revenue, they're probably saving you money by doing the client relation part. It doesn't take much client handholding before you need to hire more people.
100W 24"x36" Morntech laser, 4"x5" Betterlight digital scanback camera
Corel X5, Macs, PCs, Illustrator CS5, PS CS5, more software than we care to mention here.
Two Epson 9900 giclee printers - Bellevue, WA
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When I was lining up material the one supplier that I talked to wanted to know if I was competing with one of my clients and I had to have the client call and say that it was for one of their customers that they had contact me directly to do the job as there was not enough money for them to sub it out to me.
Member
What Rodney said...I have several wholesale customers that I make or engrave things for. Most of their customers are local to me as well, but there is a line in business that you never cross. If you do, it will come back to bite you in the end.. It's all about ethics..
Epilog 24TT(somewhere between 35-45 watts), CorelX4, Photograv(the old one, it works!), HotStamping, Pantograph, Vulcanizer, PolymerPlatemaker, Sandblasting Cabinet, and a 30 year collection of Assorted 'Junque'
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