Time flies like an arrow...

[ffutures]

...fruit flies like a banana.

Which leads me to one of my periodic rants on laboratory supply prices.

I wanted some fruit flies for work - nothing fancy, just the ordinary wild type.

Lab catalogue says £7.55, which I thought was a bit steep considering they're... well, they're flies... but everyone else seemed to be charging about the same, so I added it to an order I was placing yesterday, which was mostly glassware etc.

Today the supplier got back to me - since they're living organisms, they come from another company, with a surcharge of (wait for it....) £7.50. So the flies now cost £15.05.

So I told them to cancel it, and went looking for alternates. And ended up buying a pack for £4.50 inc P&P on Ebay UK, sold to feed lizards.

And the moral here - if you want something that is used for a narrow specialisation, look outside the box. You may be pleasantly surprised...

This isn't an isolated case, incidentally.

Vacuum pumps sold via school science suppliers cost about £250-£300. Vacuum pumps sold via air conditioning companies (used to get the air out of pipes) cost less than half that, for apparently identical pumps.

When I wanted some bottled gas and couldn't justify renting full-sized cylinders, the scientific suppliers wanted £60 a cylinder for the disposable type. We ended up getting them from a welding supplier who offered some of the gases we needed at £14 for TWO slightly smaller cylinders...

And one of the lab supply companies is selling laser light boxes (basically, laser levels) at £75 for 5. They appear to be identical to the ones I got in a pound shop last year...

Comments

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to say this and forgetting, but I really admire your ingenuity and creativity in sourcing the materials you need without paying through the nose for the stuff.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I wish I could do it every time - it takes a lot of time, and I'm sure we pay more than we have to for quite a lot of things.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

Of course, if you factored the cost of your time into the equation, how much are you really saving? Part of what you are paying for is being able to find everything you need in one place, rather than spending your time hunting around for it.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

If he has a fixed budget for supplies and he's not paid hourly, it becomes a win (for his employer, at least).

You know he's got those old-timey values :-D

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Exactly right - I have to be there, I do the ordering when we're not busy. When we equipped our new labs our old ones were closed for refurbishment, and we had a period of three months when we were pretty much doing no practical science. I ordered about £15,000 worth of equipment, it would have been more than £20,000 if I hadn't been able to spend several weeks looking for best value etc.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Well done!

This seems to work in all walks of life. Bio-degradable cat litter made from dried corn is much cheaper if purchased from suppliers of chicken feed, and cheaper still when sold to garages for soaking up spilled oil...

Amazing how much packaging makes a difference.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

"Amazing how much packaging makes a difference."

I think you might enjoy FIRST CONTRACT by Greg Costikyan. It has a lot of entertaining retail business practice info disguised in a superior-aliens-contact-earth story. To keep you spoiler free I won't say any more about it, but it definitely covers why things are priced the way they are, which can bear little resemblance to what it costs to produce them and get them to market.

Aside from that, now that you can easily look up pricing for items online, the prices for things within an industry tend to be in a fairly narrow band. Educational suppliers will cross-check each other, but they won't check construction suppliers or pet shops.

Back in the early 1980s, my manager at K-Mart used to send groups of us out to check the prices for similar items at other competitors to make sure we didn't have anything outrageously under (or over) priced. Now anybody can do it in the comfort of their office.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I use cat litter for chemical spill kits. It's about a fifth the price of commercial chemical absorbent material, and works just as well.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

This is an odd association, but in one of the early issues of Saucy Li'l Tart, the last inside page was devoted to the theme of bondage gear you could acquire much cheaper as a feed and hardware store than at a sex toy shop. I particularly remember the past-the-elbow rubber gloves. . . .

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

There's been some discussion on the blogs this week about the relative cost of a sous-vide cooker and a thermostatically-controlled slow cooker. DIY here seems to be the way to go.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately not an option I can use for mains electrical equipment, the school can't let me because everything has to have appropriate safety certification.

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

It's also very true for jewelry making supplies. For example, I can order grinding wheels for my flexshaft from a dental supply company for about 1/3 the price a jeweler's supply charges. You just have to be willing to look in odd corners to find what you want.

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

In my local Tesco in Birmingham, aborio rice for risotto was £1.05/pound in the World Foods section (it took me ages to find it, because it's a staple here in Melbourne.) but one could get short grain rice in the pudding section for significantly less. The end result is indistinguishable.

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

And let me guess, the outside the box suppliers don't mess up orders nearly as much as your standard ones?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Usually not - they are generally larger and more efficient companies than the lab supply guys, who only sell to a relatively restricted market.