'Highest Quality at the Lowest Price' core business model leads to removal of '800' number from website at Builders Depot Direct Grows 300% in 12 months.

Dear Customers,

You have clicked the link here and are probably getting frustrated at why you cannot find a phone number for that I apologize.  Please give me a moment to explain.

Our company grew by 300% in 2009 and during September of 2009 we were literally getting 1,000s of site visitors and hundreds of phone calls.  We were not able to answer all the calls they were all going to voicemail and customers were getting frustrated.

So as a company we had to make a decision:

1. Hire more people to answer the phone
2. Remove the phone number and go to email and simplified ordering process

Option ‘A’ – Our core business model is “The Highest Quality Product at the Lowest Possible Price”.  We would need to hire 5 inside people to answer the number of phone calls this would result in over $200K+ in additional cost, medical, time off, managing the employees, etc, etc.

That would translate into adding to the cost of the product $4SF for every 50,000SF sold – just to break even.  So our beautiful and ridiculously low priced Carrara Basketweave would not cost $11.95SF but $15.95SF, our $7.00SF Honed Carrara 3x6” would have to cost $11.00SF, you get the picture.

Option ‘A’ is completely against our core business model.  In addition most of the phone calls 80% were simply speculative conversations – the customer that knew what he or she wanted, simply ordered a sample to check the quality and then via email asked for a freight quote.  Then the order shipped, tracking number provided and process completed perfectly with EBay & Amazon reviews to prove our authenticity.

So again we came back to a choice, make 20% of our buying customers pay $4SF more so the other 80% can have a speculative conversation.

It sounds so blunt when put like that – but the answer was obvious, we were not going to make ‘our customers’ pay a dime more for the product, we were not going to pass the cost of these speculative conversations onto our buying customers – it is not fair especially in this economy.

So there you have it – we chose option ‘B’ and removed the phone number.

Now let me be clear all of our customers deal with a sales rep, who and will talk to them on the phone if needed, this is not a problem at all, we just wanted to end the 100’s of speculative unnecessary phone calls that putting an ‘800’ number on our website creates, we are not selling complicated equipment – just premium, marble, glass, tile, laminate, etc.

Our order/business process is simple:

2. they email us for a freight quote with zip code, product and quantity
3. we email back the best possible freight rate (usually a list of terminals) or if a mosaic order under 100SF a FedEx ground rate
4. the customer selects the terminal/shipping method of their choice
5. the customer is then sent a final quote including shipping
6. the customer agrees to the quote
7. PayPal invoice is sent or Credit Card authorization form is completed, once paid, BOL#/PRO# and Tracking details are sent on
8. The customer is contacted as soon as their shipment arrives
9. Hopefully the customer then writes us a nice review as others have done on Amazon or EBay

Eight simple steps to getting products premium products at 70% below retail store and home centers prices, 70% below because we have eliminated all possible costs.  The 9^th step is extra and completely voluntary.

I hope this helps to explain why there is no phone number on the website, let me know your thoughts – is this a good decision?  Would you rather pay $7SF for Carrara 3x6” or $11SF and a phone number be on the site?  Let me know – I pushed for the removal of the phone number, was I wrong?  My name is James and you can email me at sales@buildersdepotdirect.com I would be very interested to hear other points of view.