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Independent hardware and home-improvement retail is a large wholesale channel with its own structure: co-operative buying groups, deep assortments, slow-moving stock and vendor requirements that are strict about logistics and relaxed about very little. This page explains that channel. It does not describe any relationship with a named retailer, because there is none.
Much of independent hardware retail is organised as co-operatives whose members are individually owned stores buying through a shared organisation. Being listed centrally does not mean every store stocks you, and the individual owner still chooses — which means two sales rather than one.
These retailers carry an enormous number of items, many of which sell a few units a year. That rewards reliability and breadth over trend, and it punishes suppliers who cannot fill a small reorder years after launch.
Nothing here is unusual for the channel, and all of it is published in the vendor guide before the first order rather than discovered from a deduction.
Holds a profile per retailer with their requirements, records the deductions taken against you and links them to the orders they came from, so a pattern is visible as a pattern. It has no relationship with any retailer named on this site and does not represent one.