The recent International Roofing Expo in Las Vegas didn’t provide much in the way of new technology or brand new products – of course, that show rarely does; the roofing industry isn’t exactly on the same technology schedule as, say, the IT industry.

Even so, the show is always interesting – it’s fun to connect with old friends and hear stories from various suppliers, consultants and contractors. It’s also fun to sort of gauge the “mood” of the industry and try to capture the “theme” of the show.

Both of those are fairly subjective, and not always easy to nail down, but for this year’s IRE, one theme was easily recognizable. The roofing industry is fed up with working with Wal-Mart.
Two stories – one from a consultant, one from a manufacturer – illustrate why. The consultant Rexplained that at the time he went into negotiate the next year’s contract, Wal-Mart had owed him more than $500,000 in back fees. At the meeting, the Wal-Mart person handed him a “fee schedule” defining for the consultant what he could charge for his services. Such practices when working with large corporations may be relatively common, but given the amount of money in arrears, the consultant says he couldn’t resist a tirade, part of which included, “The day I can walk into one of your stores and tell you what I’m going to pay for a TV is the day you can tell me what to charge!” That consultant, who had met and says he admired Sam Walton, discontinued his business relationship with Wal-Mart.

The manufacturer representative’s story was less dramatic and probably much more common. He explained that one of his sales reps was flying from Vegas to Bentonville for a 15-minute meeting with a Wal-Mart representative (probably in the lobby, he quipped – Wal-Mart is somewhat notorious for holding product rep meetings in the lobby of their headquarters!). The rep was then flying back to Vegas for the rest of the roofing show. Huge hassle? Absolutely! Did they consider not going for more than one second? Absolutely not!

Let’s face it – it’s the rare company that will turn down even the possibility of getting to bid on a Wal-Mart contract. The hassles associated with working with the company – playing by their rules, working on their schedule, paying what they want to be charged – usually don’t overwhelm the visions of dollar sign, dancing in heads. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t getting more and more fed up. And it definitely doesn’t mean it’s less fun to hear horror stories about it!