We recently expanded my wife’s Event Decorating Academy to sell wedding and event decorating supplies to students and professional decorators. We were buying from distributors who supply various retailers and small wholesalers such as ourselves.
End of last month my wife and I attended the ASD retail merchant trade show. This trade show is held in March and August in Vegas. They also have one in NYC in September.
As a result of attending the ASD show are now buying directly from the same sources as many of our suppliers, cutting 35-40% off the distributor price we were paying. Many of these items we buy by the pallet so savings is huge. The largest example is curtains used for fabric draping at weddings and events. We sell thousands of these a month.
Cool, but what does this have to do with landlording?
A lot actually. At the show I found a number of products that we buy in quantity for the properties we own and mange at prices that were surprising. For example passage sets and deadbolt locks for $3.00 a piece. These are steel latch ANSI Grade 3, similar to the Defiant or Legacy brands at Menards and Home Depot. We actually upgraded to the “off brand” a number of years ago when Kwikset changed to a plastic latch in their 200 series that would break and lock tenants in their room.