Buyer vs. Seller, Part 2: The $201K Increase Letter

A resin buyer saves $84K on a renewal, then gets a $201K increase letter 90 days later. Tyler Wheeler and Michael Workman play it out live: same buyer, same seller, same five resins. The only thing that changes is what the buyer knows. In this live session, Michael Workman plays a distributor account manager and Tyler Wheeler plays the purchasing manager at Harbor Point Molding, a custom injection molder with 8.5 million pounds of annual resin spend and a $300K savings target from the CFO. Round 1 is the annual renewal: polypropylene homopolymer, FDA copolymer, ABS, nylon 6 and a glass-filled compound. The buyer trades a 24-month term for a penny on polypropylene and saves $84K. Round 2 starts 90 days later with a $201K price increase letter. Using a line-by-line brief, the buyer reopens all five lines, challenges the index, caps the nylon increase, moves ABS from $1.90 to $1.68 and the compound from $2.85 to $2.25. In this episode: - Why a 24-month term should never be given away for free - How an increase letter reopens every line, not just the ones it names - The question that moved ABS 22 cents a pound and the FDA grade zero - Index drift: when the index prints 2 cents and the cost moved 1 - Three questions to ask of any increase letter - Q&A: additives, masterbatch, and telling a real increase from margin expansion All companies, producers, prices and headlines in this session are illustrative. Watch the video. Read the transcript. The Round 2 brief. Benchmark assessment.