Sinks as a Sales Tool
“I give away two models of sinks, and both of them are 18-gauge,” he explains. “However, I offer an upgrade to a 16-gauge sink for $250. Once they pick it up, there’s nothing in the world compared to it, I’ve covered my cost, I still don’t have to chase the sink, and I’ve made myself a hero to my customer.”
Cache Valley’s White says his philosophy about charging for a sink is that while it’s nice to be able to sell something at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), he’d rather sell a sink for close to cost, again for the convenience factor.
“Besides, if you throw out an MSRP of $600, they think they’re getting a $600 sink, but we’re not spending that much to throw it in,” he says. “We’d rather add a sink with a $600 MSRP than give a five-percent or 10-percent discount. It’s cheaper dollars for us at the end of the day, and it’s often a sweeter deal for the customer.
“If we can make $100 on a sink, or $200,” he adds, “it’s better than nothing.”
White has taken offering sinks even another step forward, and now has faucets in his showroom. He says they’re a nice item to include free in a sale, although the company also makes money on them – again in the name of convenience.
“Our installers carry white, chrome and bisque faucets with them at all times,” he explains. “When they show up at a granite jobsite and are installing the sink, they’ll tell the customer they need the faucet to cut the hole. If the customer hasn’t thought about it, the installer can offer a selection of nice, high-end faucets. We sell quite a few of them on jobsites through our installers.”
International Granite’s Stewart isn’t quite so enamored of faucets. While his company does sell them, he’s not real enthused about offering the product.
“Plumbers don’t like to warranty something they don’t sell,” he says. “With the sink, a warranty isn’t that important, because a sink isn’t going to break. However, there can be a lot of moving parts in a faucet.”
Regardless of how far a shop decides to get into offering sinks, it isn’t really necessary to have a huge range of options to offer. Many shops make do offering a selection that features single-basin, equal basin, large-small and small-large choices.
And, of course, stone fabricators have the ideal way to display these sinks, too. Keystone’s Pickart is fairly typical.
“We have them displayed in countertops to show the difference between the drop-in and the undermount,” he says. “We’ve also built display racks where we can set the sinks in at an angle so people can get a good look at them.”
While Pickart says his suppliers haven’t offered advise on displaying the sinks, they have provided sales materials.
Finding a supplier to work with on providing sinks to a stone fabrication shop isn’t necessarily difficult, either.
Solid Surface’s Spicher was so disappointed by the sinks available in the market when he began his current business that he and a partner created their own line of sinks, which they offer to the stone industry through another business. However, few fabricators go to that extreme.
Just as his Zodiaq supplier approached White, Pickart and Stewart say they were solicited to carry sinks.