There are theories and there are theories, when it comes to good supply techniques. Some people hold that the best way to source your janitorial supplies is to shop around, weighing a bargain here against a cut price offer there until you’ve properly stocked the office cleaning cupboard or restaurant supply area. The savings, they argue, that you can make if you take the time to go from supplier to supplier, measuring price differences, haggling with customer services over the phone, swapping individual suppliers of particular products when you find out they can be had cheaper somewhere else: the savings you can make are large enough to justify the time spent looking.

Others would argue that going to all that trouble, measuring up the prices, delivery charges and times, of different suppliers, represents a pretty huge waste of person hours against the possible savings you can make. Janitorial supplies, they’ll tell you, ought to be sourced from a single point: a supplier you can build a good relationship with, and who will be able to supply everything you need for an overall price that probably beats the individual discounts landed by our hypothetical “all over town” shopper.

It’s a basic rule of purchasing, this – successful buying in bulk happens when you find a good supplier and stick with them. Two things happen, after a company has been sourcing its cleaning products from a single place for a little while: first, those products get placed on a regular order list, which means even less time is spent working out what to buy every week; and second, the company holding the janitorial supplies starts to develop a proper supply relationship with the business doing the buying. A proper supply relationship usually entails ad hoc discounting, loyalty benefits and access to repeat customer only special offers. All things that far outweigh the dubious savings garnered by a company that trots round the houses every week looking for individual bargains.

Cleaning products are probably one of the highest turnover items in any company inventory. Cleaning happens daily in every good business, whether it is a customer facing concern or not: and that requires an awful lot of powder and lotions and dilutions. Janitorial supplies are in constant demand by the end user, which means they are constantly having to be ordered – if one is ordering them from multiple locations (not to mention locations that change every time a new offer is found somewhere else) then one is going to end up spending a huge proportion of the working week just looking for outlets that sell the right stuff at the right price.

On the other hand, patronising a single stockist for one’s janitorial supplies ensures quick re-ordering and a constant tab kept on what is and what is not in stock at any given time. Plus, the cleaning products held by a single company will all be complementary – so all the hardware they sell will work fine with all the preparations and dilutions.

You could save money by shopping around endlessly – but at what time cost? Using a single supplier for cleaning products is time effective as well as cost effective.