Wah.. you really hardworking hor... 

Sifu still on top of mountain... use your GPS find him...

Fuyoh!!!!!

Building material so free one meh? Still got time to do other thing?
I thought have to entertain customers

I see. Trading house. Own business?

Trading house is not cheater. Trading house is more likely to be cheated if anything... LOL

Personally I dont like trading house, but my boss like trading. I would rather do something involved processing and therefore much higher margin.

Trading house is all about VOLUME... and can be very profitable.. if you can keep increasing volume. Just look at all the listed trading house in bursa like DKSH...with net margin of less than 2% yet earnings increase year after year...

Another BIG building materials trading house which is listed is Hap Seng Consolidated, which also on low margin, but have HUGE volume... 

Reduced margin still acceptable. But we experience so many times customer simply cut corners by ordering a lower grade material and when receive, not satisfied and return.

All these ******* are my boss friend. I really dont know why he called them friends anyway. I think his eyes got problem.

We are in the same boat...

Not afraid... typical chinaman...

Actually we are relatives la. My grandpa and granduncles fund their sons to start this company. They always tell me owe more than this term my son also know how to do, this la that la. In the end, all those low margin, long term customers all belong to them. My dad also same.

My clients either high margin, good payer etc. I only do good ones. Too lazy to entertain bad ones as I dont even have entertainment claims.

Customer keep calling me tauke kia... but I really wonder... how you can call someone tauke kia when his dad did not own the share of the company.   

Apparently I was thinking the same thing when my dad die die also want me in. At the time, I just resign from a sales job earning 3k++

Came in and get a 1.5K salary. Work like hell, increase to 2K. Get a company car to drive. After 8 years, still stuck with 3K+ salary, no entertainment claims, company car and petrol. MY customers who deal 500-600K per annum ask me no freebies meh? I also dont know how to answer. Use a part of my bonus pay for their lunches.

Want to know why my dad no share? He is not my grandpa favorite son. My grandpa got 2 shares, gave to other uncles. He and my other uncle who started this company actually got a chance to own share by deducting salary, but since salary was already low 30 years back, they decided to forego the opportunity and just wanted to be fully paid.

Somemore, it was not until 2005, they finally wake up. Why do I earn so much for the company while only took 10K home monthly. Then they start to buy Merc, double their salary la. Sigh... crazy crazy world...

We have done trading before.. you can negotiate float with manufacturer.. 

You sell at 30 days terms, you pay manufacturer at 60 days term.. FOC capital.. but depend lar you must have good volume/rapport with manufacturer and good payment to nego for longer term. 

Hmm... most of my suppliers all with 60 days to 90 days terms one... very rare cash required, unless 1 time business one.. 

I think it depends you need them more or they need you more... 

That was a real life story .. our relative distributor ship closed because of certain hypermarket...

That's just my thinking la....

Say for them trading/wholesaling businesses, if they operate on 5% or 10% margin....
How to survive?

They must give credit (maybe 30 days or 45 days)....
If one account takes goods worth 10k.....
And that 10k account turns bad.....

Basic math will tell us, it needs the business 100k (10% profit margin) to cover that 10k account just in case it turns bad.

Correct?

So my conclusion is cannot survive one....

Is that so?
But was your company doing 5%-10% margins?

Erm... I think usually companies that operate on 5-10% margin is because its diluted margins.

For example, my boss manyak suka trading. He earns RM80 for each tonne of steel. He trades tens of thousand tonnes every year. Most of them are delivered straight to customer from Port Klang although some does make an extra trip through our factory. These are more than enough to cover boss expenses, his salary and Mercedes Benz.

But for overheads, still have to rely on higher margins stuffs. For example, we do steel cutting, all kinds of shapes. My boss would slap at least 10% plus labor charges. Some extra there. For me, if its project related or something that requires accuracy/difficulty, I usually slap around 30-50% inclusive of labor charges (dont ask me why). Not to mention that we also have wastage which was billed to the client but we get to kept it as scrap.

This is partly why I get bored sometimes. Low margin stuffs aint my cup of tea but makes up more than half of our revenue (in fact I think 70% or more). In the end, our diluted margin is only 10% at best. Trading is almost limitless, if money is not a problem. 1% on 100 million revenue will still net you 1million profit, whereas even though I can net between RM600-1000 per tonne of steel processed (at best 2 tonne/day per machine), I still get lower profit than my boss.

MS/Carbon/AR400 Plate, low and medium hot rolled carbon bars, cast iron bar, stainless steel round bar, cold drawn round, hexagon, square bars, and seamless hot rolled pipe.

We rarely get involved with construction industry because too many conmen liao. MS Plate all are monopolized by local listed trading house. We only do processing.

Erm, I can recommend some dealers to you, but I cant really promise anything. The one that my boss trade most right now is Angles and C-channels from China, but we hardly keep stock. Thats why I also dont promote it at all. It sucks when you only have certain sizes leftover from trading.