Plywood plywood plywood

There was some interest in Inventables selling plywood on the Greats shoe store in Venice California post.

@AngusMcleod was joking that plywood was $100 where he lives…yes you heard that right. I guess he wasn’t joking he was serious.

Then @PhillipDanner asked if Inventables could offer low shipping costs material to the door. We have some plywood but it’s not big and shipping is expensive.

This thread is to gauge interest.

What if we sold a piece of plywood that fit exactly the work area of the X-Carve and it came with FREE shipping.

How much would you pay per sheet?

2 Likes

OK I should have been clear I am looking for prices in USD not Barbados Dollarettes. Dollarettes do sound cute.

  1. We are looking per sheet for 750mm x 750mm
  2. Tell me your price for 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 nominal boards
  3. Finished one side or two? You tell me.
  4. FREE shipping in the lower 48.
  5. For other countries it’s a bit of a more complex calculation as we learned from our FREE international shipping Black Friday promotion. We will figure out that calculation if we can first figure out the lower 48 price.
1 Like

With free shipping, I would be extremely interested. However, I don’t have a good gage for what to expect price-wise because I haven’t done much with plywood up until now. However, part of the reason I haven’t is because it’s hard for me to transport it home with the size of car I have.

Sorry, not much help with the cost side of the question, but since you said you were gaging interest I wanted to chime in.

1 Like

@AdamNorris yea transporting a 4x8 foot sheet is a challenge. So you’re saying if we had an offering with free shipping you’d be interested?

I am not sure if this will help, but that’s all I know.
1/4"x5’x5’ Baltic Birch Plywood Unfinished Store Pickup at local store in Dallas, Texas $14
1/2"x5’x5’ Baltic Birch Plywood Unfinished Store Pickup at local store in Dallas, Texas $17 (Different store)

That seems extremely cheap for ‘Baltic Birch’ in those sizes. Are you sure it’s ‘baltic’?

2 Likes

Do you have a link to the product on the store website?

That’s all part of the calculation here. First we need to figure out how much people are willing to pay. With the waste board you only get 1 board. With this plywood we might have to do something like minimum X because then we can divide the shipping cost across X number of sheets.

But how much are people willing to pay?

1 Like

Sorry I should have specified. These are not from retail stores. These are from wholesale stores that cater to professionals with cabinet and furniture makers.

2 Likes

Another thing to consider is that plywood is much lighter than MDF (wasteboard).

1 Like

You may also need to consider international regulations that apply to the shipment of wood products.
We utilize large shipping crates made from plywood here at work and they must be treated for plant pest and disease prior to shipment and must carry a special stamp. I am not sure if this would apply to shipping plywood sheets.

1 Like

It would be more of a convenience really(at least for me). I pay like $32 for 3/4 radiata or $56~ for 3/4 purebond. But I don’t have a truck so I have to get it cut down to fit in my vehicle. And my table saw is a small jobsite saw that has a rip cap of 22 inch(for now) so it becomes a hassle sometimes. And if I didn’t have the table saw, :zipper_mouth_face:

If Inventables could get it priced roughly the same plus whatever that convenience fee of them doing the work is, I’d be in. If I could get the equivalent of a 4x8 sheet(let’s say 8x 2x2 pcs for simplicity) I’d gladly pay like 10-15~ extra a sheet just to save the time spent at the store and cutting it down further. (I am talking full sheets here to keep pricing easy).

I feel shipping costs would be hard to make that work unless they got a phenomenal supplier or some awesome shipping rates so the profit may not be there.

1 Like

I see your point, but it might be a little extreme to say “be a fool to buy plywood from you.” Just because it doesn’t make sense for you and your situation does not mean that it would not make sense for anyone else.

For the reason I mentioned before, rather than me needing to go to a store, get it cut down and transported home, I would be willing to overpay slightly for the convenience of it arriving at my doorstep, assuming it is competitively priced.

I live in the DFW area. What wholesale store?

Menards has project sizes two by two, two by four etc.
Inventables would have to move a lot of plywood to be competitive.
Maybe if they were able to strike a deal directly with manufacturer but quantities would have to be high.

1 Like

most bigbox stores will cut 4x8 sheets to whatever size you tell them free of charge

1 Like

Can we focus on actual prices you would pay here? I understand all the concern but I just want to focus on how much you would actually pay.

OR

If you are saying there is NO PRICE you would buy plywood online even if it was the size of the cutting area that’s fine too.

For this to work we will be cutting a deal directly with the manufacturer and having sheets cut to size before they arrive. We will pick, pack, and ship the boards in a box and ship them for FREE.

It sounds like @PhilJohnson won’t be buying plywood from Inventables at any price. That’s cool. Totally understand. Anyone else have a number that makes sense for them?

1 Like

Here’s two stores down the street from me, and unless you can go cheaper then the big box stores then it maybe worth your effort.

1 Like

@Zach_Kaplan Honestly it depends on the type/quality. I’ll break it down for me at least.

I pay 32~ for 3/4 4x8 Radiata Pine 13 ply.
I’d probably say I’d pay 15~ to have it cut and delivered to my doorstep because that’s at least 2-3 hours of driving and cut time I don’t have to do in a small vehicle.
So $47 comes out to ~1.50/sqft. If y’all did work area sizes of 30x30 that works out to close to $9.50.
I’d use the same math for other types of ply as well like hardwood veneer, my cost + plus convenience broken down.
3/4 Hardwood veneer is ~50 which works out to 12.7 for 30x30.

This is pretty close to the Menards pricing from the looks of it.

Radiata Pine and Purebond(Or Sande) are really all I use(I like plywood furniture). Radiata is my substitute for birch because its high ply and it’s hard to find birch anywhere close. And I really like the Purebond hardwood veneers. I rarely ever buy anything but 3/4 for ply though but if I did, I’d apply the same formula there as well to get a ballpark of what I’d pay.

For me, I’d love to be able to pay a good price for a project size panel and be able to get a variety of hardwood veneer etc rather than grabbing full sheets (I cant justify getting project panels at big box stores when full sheets are less than $10 more). It would be awesome to grab a Walnut veneer sheet, carve and inlay some resin and have an awesome looking walnut sign without the cost of…well… walnut lol.

That’s where I’m at with it. Hope it helps!

1 Like

Didn’t even think of this. Good way to get margins in a good spot while keeping prices low.

They charge me per cut after the free one, It’s come to me just asking them to break sheets down to 4x 2x4 panels so I can get out of there. Last trip was close to 2 hours for a single sheet. For me, I’m ok paying a few bucks more to have that time back. If I had a truck or a bigger table saw it would be a non issue but you can only fit so much in a Rogue. lol

1 Like