"target" priceing..

[mrpackethead]

I'm currently experiencing quite a lot of growth and am buying components from a number of vendors..      I often have a choice of suppliers for the same part.
I'm pretty sure that the listed price is not the best pricing that you can get, and I think its worth the effort to chase..

it seems common practice in this industry that the vendors ask for a "target" price.       This is annoying, i really just want them to give me their best price and i can pick..

How do you get the best price when they ask for these target prices.

[tautech]

Start out by sending a group email to all so the can all see who they might be competing against.
Then sit back and enjoy thinking of them sharpening their pencils. 

Each will be in a different position of inventory, cash flow and lead times, make the hungriest win.

[Kilrah]

This is annoying, i really just want them to give me their best price and i can pick..

Their "best price" is their list price of course, that's what they ideally want you to pick, nobody would straight away give offer the lowest they'd accept.
They'll bend but you have to be the active part of the negociation...

[rollatorwieltje]

This is annoying, i really just want them to give me their best price and i can pick..

We all want that of course, but that's not how this market works. It's all about good relations. There's a huge difference between buying random stuff and giving your supplier an order to deliver X items every Y weeks for Z years. When you move enough volume prices can go down significantly, in the order of 50+% in some cases. Being a long time customer also helps.

I can't share exact numbers of the company I work for (don't even have most of them), but as an example, we buy din rail power supplies from a very well known manufacturer for about 1/3th of the retail price. We use around 6k units per year, and the contract spans multiple years (3 or 5 I think).

[tszaboo]

Find a vendor, like Arrow, Avnet or something local. They work differently than Digikey, or buying direct, but they can help you a lot. You really need to think differently with these price negotiations.