Fiberglass Cloth Pricing Industry Standard by Thayercraft
About Thayercraft
Fiberglass cloth is always sold by the linear yard and never by the square yard as a standard for the industry. There may be indivuals selling cloth pieces that describe their piece as in the number of square yards but as a convention fiberglass cloth is only sold by the running or linear yard. Square yard is only used in the identification of the cloth as in oz/sq yd or ounces per square yard. It would just not be practical to sell cloth by the square yard for many reasons.
Each individual roll of fiberglass cloth has four basic identifying criteria and are in the order of 1 - Style, 2 - Width, 3 - Finish and 4 - Yards (linear or running yards). Our price codes are in that order using the numbers and separating with dashes. Example: A roll of style 7500 that is 20" in width, has a finish of 504 volan and is 20 linear yards in length will be written as 7500-20-504-20yds. We always put the yds at the end just for closure, but it will always be in that order. One rare occasion we use square yards other than the identification of the cloth is in determining weights of rolls for shipping and in pricing to see if we're in line.
One some simple trick you can use to see if you're getting a good deal from us compared to other fiberglass cloth vendors and in comparing various roll sizes within a group is to calculate the price per square foot. Just take the total of the roll with the free shipping and divide the square feet of the roll into it. For the 20 yard roll of the 7500 20" you would multiply 20" by 36" and divide by 144"/ft to get 5 square ft per linear yard. For the 20 yard roll this would be 100 square feet. If the cost of the 7500-20-504-20yds is $75 you would divide the 100 into the 75 for a cost of $0.75/sq ft. You could then compare this to a 7500 38" roll which has 9.5 sq ft per linear yard and calculate it's cost per square foot and see if you're better off going with the wider width.
You may notice some inconsistency in our pricing. There are a few reasons for this. One is that we buy and sell surplus, over runs, and 1st quality normal price as well. When we get a real deal on cloth we pass it along to you. Another reason that is slightly harder to understand has to do with the finishes. The cloth that is made in less quantity with less coming our way is the cloth that has soft silane or really soft volan finishes. There is much of some styles woven for the aerospace industry that have stiffer finishes intended for pre pregging or in using other processing methods that don't require drapability. For that reason you will notice a difference in the cost of the stiffer silanes versus the softer volans. It's just supply and demand along with our costs.
As discussed on other pages I have been in business, though a wimpy start, since the late 70's. Starting in the 80's I used to ship just large amounts for the most part to other re sellers. After computers became common place and the internet emerged I developed a website. What happened with the website was that I was exposed to the world and soon after many individuals called me for cloth instead of buying from their normal supplier. The business changed to more selling direct to the end user. For the light weight cloth that meant instead of going to the hobby shop for packs of folded cloth they would contact me for short rolls. We changed our pricing to include the small rolls to accomodate this demand. We still have some other resellers. As things have changed and many of the people we used to wholesale to have died and others have filled their place. What is now taking place is if we sell to these resellers, who also buy from the weavers just like I do, that I am competing with myself. Another thing that's happened in a way is the go between has become obsolete. Before the internet people really didn't have accurate information about products except from the retailer. With the internet people are much more informed about all things. Remember when a retailer would tell you they could order it for you?
So my latest business evolution and adaptation is to just sell directly to you and stop selling to other re sellers all together. The small rolls we sell are kind of pricy but have to be to compensate for all the extra time it takes to put a roll up, re roll it, pack it, do the labels and to keep people on the job that are reliable is incredible. It's not an easy job. Because of the unforgiving nature of most of the fiberglass weaves we just haven't been able to come up with the mechanized process of doing it without wrinkles. Some rolls are downright difficult to re roll and it takes a special person for this job. There's a lot of cost in rolling the small rolls but nobody does it better than us. Most everybody we know is higher priced than us as well. Most everybody else sells a big variety of other items their sites seem kind of confusing to me. On this site is just fiberglass cloth. All about fiberglass cloth presented in a way you know what you're getting.
Not having advanced to the level of merging all the varying weights of rolls with shipping destinations we make our best effort to estimate shipping conservatively adding this to the price of the rolls. Nothing is free of course and this estimate is included in the price of the roll. This is a real broad estimate as, of course, the closer you are to us the cheaper our cost and the further away you are the more it will cost.
Free shipping to the lower 48, Free shipping to the 48 continental United States all mean the same thing. The 48 United States are the those not including Hawaii and Alaska. If you live in those areas and want to order a roll of cloth you can pay for the roll or rolls and we'll send you the full amount of the shipping charge to the area from us. Many people wonder why we don't discount some since we're giving shipping for free to other area. The reason is that always without exception it takes much more time shipping to other areas costing us much more in administrative costs. It is very routine shipping to the 48 states and anything outside that takes much more time in paper work and using alternative shipping methods. Many times we have to take the post office or to another shipping terminal. All this costs more time and money so we charge the full shipping amount on top of the price you see that has free shipping to the lower 48 or Continental United States. If you're good with that just send the payment for the roll as listed and we'll invoice you the difference for the actual shipping cost. This applies to HI, AK, Canada and any international destination.
We have 5 forklifts in the building here, 2 on the first floor, 1 on the 2nd and 2 on the third floor. We ship pallets using many different trucking companies that compete for the lowest price using a couple different freight brokers. When we ship pallets we put the heaviest rolls to the bottom and center with the lghter rolls to the top. We put straps and stretch wrap. We put at least 3 labels on rolls we ship on pallets and generally 4 labels on rolls going out UPS or other ground courier.