Purchase your initial stocks

Basic Construction Materials

Let’s start with structural materials.

1.       Gravel and Sand

2.       Cement

3.       Steel

4.       Lumber

Let’s leave the gravel and sand sand for now because that a whole different game.

Cement

Everything to do with concrete building and construction needs this. And this is what you must have if you’re planning of going with selling structural materials. Before we started the store I knew that this is what I need to have first. I thought I could just get 30-50 bags here and there. I was wrong. Get this, at the time I was writing this book for you to get factory or even dealer’s supplies the minimum order is a staggering 600 hundred bags of cement costing from 195php to 213php per bag. Now do the math.

600 bags x 215 = 129,000php 

With our capital 350000php and that much cement that would leave me with still 233,000. I figure I’m still fine but after so much thought I realized I don’t have market yet. Who would I sell that to?

So I opted to be conservative. I budgeted for 100 bags instead initially. The trick is where to buy only that much. And that’s where you perseverance and ingeniousness needs to come into play. It’s easy to buy the items what’s hard is where to get the lowest price possible. So haggle and for you to get the price you wanted you have to know what’s the running price in the retail business is. So go to the nearest you and ask their selling price because most likely that how much you’re going to sell your goods too. Most hardware store has a markup of 20% so if the selling price of cement is 220php most likely they got it for 20% less. 

Steel

A rebar (short for reinforcing bar), also known as reinforcing steel, reinforcement steel, rerod, a deformed bar, reo, or reo bar, is a common steel bar, and is commonly used as a tensioning device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures holding the concrete in compression. It is usually in the form of carbon steel bars or wires, and the surfaces may be deformed for a better bond with the concrete.

Like what I said earlier I thought I knew what I was getting into. I asked around what the usual rebars being used to build a house.  These are the initial stocks I ended up buying.

12mm deformed bar

10mm deformed bar

9mm deformed bar

Watch out for these items because there are many low graded undersized rebars. But of course I didn’t know the difference then, I just relied on the goodness of my supplier (I’m laughing my ass off right now on how naive I was then). Needless to say I was conned but hey all I’m concerned about then is getting this business started. Countless purchases and sales later I learned the basic difference and established a reliable supplier.My advice ask your friends, engineers, construction workers, search the web like I did.