Reply To: Upholstery – Restaurant Warning Signals

[mitchellreid]

To all Owners and Techs,

Last week I had the most interesting thing happen. I was searching for a vinyl color to reupholster some stools at chain of restaurants but could only find a close match, not the exact color. I checked in with the distributors I knew of and found only one who had access to this color. The reason is it had been discontinued in 2019. The distributor was very anxious to get rid of the yardage they had in stock. I knew I had several restaurants with this color with at least 14 stools per location. I knew this vinyl once sold for $35-36 per yard. I had accounted for $70 of material for my recovering of the stools. I only needed 2 yards at most, but I thought there might be something to be gained here. They had 10 yards in stock. So, I offered the distributor $6 per yard if I bought all 10 yards. They accepted! So, for less than the material cost I had planned for of $70 to do just the first set of stools, I got enough material to do 60 stools at a cost of $60. That is a hard price to beat. The distributor was happy to get rid of a discontinued vinyl; the customer was happy to get the stools recovered with a close match; and I was happy to get the vinyl at a well discounted price. By acquiring the vinyl at the price of $1 per stool we will be able to turn $60 of material into $12,000 of potential upholstery sales! With 10 yards we can only recover a little over 4 stores of stools. We may have to pick another color vinyl at that point, but we may also find another distributor at that time who might have a few more yards of discontinued vinyl. You never know. Now, I know what to do if that opportunity arises again and now so do you!

I don’t often get to turn lemons into lemonade, but that was quite the opportunity. I never knew that was a possibility until today.

Sincerely,
Mitchell Reid
The Wandering Upholsterer
“All Who Wander Are Not Lost”