BUSINESS
Prespray B says it should be diluted 16:1
providing a total of 17 gallons or prespray at an
average cost of $2.17 per ready-to-use gallon.
In real world cost, prespray B is much less
expensive! Much less than a penny for each sq.
ft. of carpet you clean.
Just this weekend, I saw a Facebook post that
well illustrated this point. The poster favored
using a generic citrus product from Home Depot
for $11.99 per gallon and comparing it to a
citrus product for professional carpet cleaners
that cost about $40. Here was one reply, ”you
aren’t replacing a $30-40+ per concentrated
gallon product with the same kind of product.
Bridgepoint’s Citrus Solv is only $0.43 -$0.86
per RTU gallon. Zep’s product says, “Tough
soils – use full strength; Medium soils – dilute
1:1 with water; Light soils – dilute 8 fl. oz. per
gallon of water. “ That is $1.43 - $11.47 per RTU
gallon. Read the SDS (particularly the health
ratings) and ingredient list -- compare to your
$30-40+ products.”
You might also discover that Prespray B
comes from a manufacturer who has invested
in research & development plus field testing.
They know their products works and so they
offer a 100%, no questions asked, money back
guarantee if you decide Prespray B is not right
for you.
Brand B also offers additional cost savings.
They will give you a 10% discount on all your
cleaning agents when purchased in case lots
instead of single gallons. You just learned you
could cut 10% off your annual chemical costs
and make fewer trips to the distributor by taking
advantage of this smart buy!
For even more savings, Company B offers
discounts when you purchase by the case or
larger quantities. They will even take your empty
product bottles, recycle them and pay you for
them.
Wow! That $19.95 gallon of prespray is looking
pretty expensive now.
The Raw Materials
A tea drinker like me thinks coffee is coffee.
I don’t understand why someone would pay $4
for a cup at Starbucks when the dinner across the
street has coffee for $1. But the coffee aficionado
appreciates the difference. Similarly, most of you
who read this are not chemists. You probably
don’t buy cleaning products by the semi-truck
load. You may not be aware that one 50# bag of
sodium carbonate, for example, is not the same
as another 50# pound of sodium carbonate.
The chemical formulator knows there are many
grades that mean different purity, potency and
performance. The better products cost more.
But he is willing to pay that cost because of the
advantages offered.
D’limonene is a good example. It may come as
orange oil, as tech grade up to food grade with a
few options in between. Each is a good solvent.
Each has the pleasant aroma of orange. But each
higher grade calls for more refining to remove
impurities and that adds significantly to the cost.
Cleaning products made from better raw
materials will be more consistent. Have you
ever purchased a product that worked well one
time but did not quite do the job the next time?
Or maybe a powder that flowed freely one time
but another batch caked or formed a big hard
clump in the bottom of the container? Such
inconsistency could be due to using lesser grade
of raw materials.
Detergent or surfactant are other terms that
will appear in the list of ingredients of many
cleaning products. You could get the impression
that detergent is detergent. Did you know that
the number of different surfactants number into
the thousands? Most are proprietary products
with their own secret formulas. They all perform
similar functions such as reducing the surface
tension of water allowing it to spread out or to
penetrate various materials. They will also help
hold particles of dry soil in suspension, emulsify
oils, dissolve other soils. But exactly what they
work on and how differs.
Visit www.interlinksupply.com to learn more
about our chemicals.
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