The argument for going direct is easy to state and largely true: every party between the factory and the site adds a margin, so removing them lowers the price on the invoice.
What the argument usually leaves out is that removing a party does not remove the work that party was doing. It moves it onto the buyer. Four jobs in particular, and they are the ones that turn a cheap order into an expensive project.
One: meeting the minimum
A factory's minimum is set per item, per colour or finish — see what MOQ means when you are importing. A single project rarely reaches it on its own, and a schedule with any variety in it has to reach it several times over.
An account that already places runs with that factory is not in the same position as a first-time buyer asking for one job. This is the part of a trading house's value that is genuinely hard to replicate: it is not a discount, it is access at a volume the factory would otherwise turn away.
Two: inspecting what turns up
Somebody has to open the crates and know what they are looking at.
Going direct, that is you — before the goods are fixed, and inside whatever window the freight terms allow. It means knowing that a shade difference between boxes is normal and a glaze fault is not; that a cartridge is the part to check on a mixer; that the wrong hole spacing is a rejection rather than an adjustment.
It is not difficult work. It is work that has to actually happen, by someone who has seen the failure modes before, in the days after delivery rather than the week the tiler starts.
Three: carrying the claim
A damaged or wrong delivery is not resolved by being right about it. It is resolved by someone with a commercial relationship pressing the factory while your site waits.
Direct, that is you, at distance, in a second language, against a counterparty whose incentive is to close the matter. The practical question is not whether you have a contractual right. It is whether anyone will answer the email in March about an order placed in January, and how long your programme can absorb the wait.
Our own position on this is on the delivery page: damage is reported and claimed within 48 hours of handover, and from that point it is ours to take up.
Four: the batch you cannot get back
Fired and pressed materials vary between production runs. A top-up ordered three months later is a different batch, and it may not match.
Direct, this surfaces when a tiler runs short and the replacement box does not blend. The fix is either a re-order of the whole area or a visible line across the floor. Neither is on the original invoice, and both cost more than the margin that was saved.
The defence is to order the overage with the order — 10 to 15 per cent above the measured area — which is free advice, and much easier to act on before the fact than after.
When direct is genuinely the better buy
It would be dishonest to write this without saying so plainly. Going direct wins when:
- You are buying one item in one finish, in quantity, so a single minimum is easy to clear
- The order is large enough to fill a container, so freight is efficient
- You have someone on the ground — a person who can visit the factory, inspect before shipping, and pursue a claim in person
- You can absorb a delay, because the programme has float in it
A developer placing a single-SKU order of floor tile for four hundred units, with a procurement office in the region, should go direct. That is not a close call.
What you are actually buying from a trading house
Not a lower factory price. We are the party in the middle, and the middle costs something.
What it buys is access at volumes a project could not reach alone, one account instead of a separate supplier per trade, and a counterparty in the same time zone who answers for what arrives. Whether that is worth more than the margin depends on how many different things you are buying and how much of your own time you want to spend on the four jobs above.
For one item at container volume, it usually is not. For a schedule of twenty items across six trades on a fixed programme, it usually is.
We would rather you worked that out before you order than after.