Hardware prices in your country

[grnick50]

Dear All,

I was wondering what are the prices and the sales policies in your countries, regarding electrical hardware.
Here are links for ABB and Schneider, and attached is the pricelist for Simatic. The catalogues are in Greek but you can search for references.
The policies for ABB and Schneider is that you get a discount between 40% and 55% depending on the amount of the order. Siemens gives a discount between 7% and 20% also depending on the amount of the order.
I never understood whats the deal with the discounts but as far as I remember it was always like that.
Here, because the automation market is small, most of the market is split between ABB, Schneider and Siemens. AB is present in Greece through an authorised dealer but I didnt manage to make buisness with them. All the AB prices are available only upon request. Other companies like Omron, Mitshubishi, Wago and so on, are present also through authorized dealers, but IMO their prices are not competitive and support is non-existent.

 

[grnick50]

I guess this is a Taboo topic and noone would like to share info.
The attachments on the original post are not something secret. They are available on each companys website.

 

[FactoryTalktotheHand]

I work for a systems integrator who gets quite a high discount on AB, mostly because we buy it in very high volume. So I suspect discounts like this are designed to help large systems integrators and OEMs to sell hardware. I don't know how it is with other manufacturers, but I know that A-B sales partners don't want to sell low volume. It makes it so a low-volume customer like say an end user for instance has an incentive to buy their components through the SI/OEM. I have priced out parts to customers that still come out well below list price even with my profit margin tacked on.

This makes it so customers want to pay me for the hardware instead of buying the parts themselves and having us make it work. I prefer to do it this way anyway because not only do I get extra profit on the job (which can often and easily become the ONLY profit on a job), but I am also in control of what hardware gets used and don't have to deal with situations where the customer bought or spec'd something that doesn't work and even though it's not my fault I still have wasted hours on it figuring it out.

There are some situations where very large end-users who get a decent discount on components will want to buy the hardware themselves. This tends to spark a price war between my vendor rep and theirs, and it puts me at a disadvantage because my discount will not only have to be more than theirs, but so much more than I can actually still make a profit on it and still be cheaper for them.

There are also other outfits like AutomationDirect who just give the same discount to everybody regardless of volume (unless it's something massive like 50,000+ units or something). I love using A-D but using too many of their components can kill profitability for me since there is no incentive for the customer to go through me for parts.

 

[grnick50]

I never came across an automation direct rep in my country and I never used one.
Do you usually buy the equipment from the manufacturer AB, Siemens etc or through resellers? Is there a pricelist on which you apply your discounts or it depends on the project?
How do you define high volumes in units per year for example?