Where To Shop For Less Expensive Pumps - A Look At The Distribution-Sales Model

Whether you need an air diaphragm pump for pumping electroless nickel in your plating shop, or you need to package lubricants from your processing tank, or you simply just need it to power-wash some concrete, one of the most important factors when buying air diaphragm pumps (or anything for that matter) is price. In the current market, there is no “secret” that makes any pump brand better than another - for the most part, they all pump within the same standard range of specs. But the sales strategy employed by manufacturers is almost always the same: there is the manufacturer and then there’s the distributor. Interestingly enough, it is this exact cookie-cutter strategy that is so commonly used in the business that gives reason to such high-pricing for air diaphragm pumps.

Let’s take a well-known pump brand to use as an example: Graco. Graco itself is primarily focused on the manufacturing side of the air diaphragm pump market. They produce their own line of pumps that are branded with the Graco logo and they then sell these pumps wholesale to different distributors. These distributors in turn sell them to direct consumers or often to retailers, who then hand them off to end-users.

The thing is, for every name that is involved in the selling process, from the time it is manufactured until it reaches the end-user, adds to the final cost of the pump itself, and the farther down this slippery slope you go, the greater your pockets tend to suffer. In addition to this, in many cases the manufacturing facilities happen to be oversees, where they get charged with tariffs before they’re even touched by a distributor.

So, now that the problem has been identified, the solution seems quite simple (and it is): cut out the middle man. Very few companies manufacture, stock, AND distribute their own pumps. It just tends to be too much work for a lot of places. But Plating International is an exception. We manufacture our own line of air diaphragm pumps in our own production facility and then we store those pumps in our warehouse facility (located in Franklin Park, IL) for direct shipment. When you buy from Plating International, you don’t have to worry about paying ridiculously high prices for air diaphragm pumps because we’ve managed to completely cut out the middle-man! We guarantee our prices are cheaper than any other name-brand pump on the market: Wilden, Graco, ARO, Sandpiper, Tuthill… you name it! Check out our air diaphragm pump page for more info or contact us today for a quote!