I'm a new member so not up to speed on how the forum is used but what made me join was that I have a customer that wants some 6"x6" Bloomsbury wall tiles. I thought the only likely way to find some would be to locate somebody in the trade that might have them gathering dust on a shelf somewhere - can anybody help?
It also got me thinking about moving surplus stock around the trade for our mutual benefit. For instance we often have a few boxes of special order H&R Johnsons tiles (or similar) that are left over at the end of a contract. We would probably end up throwing them in a skip whilst somebody else, unknown to us, might be crying out for them. Is there a facilty for us all to promote our surplus tiles, which I suggest should be at a heavily discounted rate, so that we can all benefit?

I am very surprised something like this hasnt been taken up by someone with space...like a farmer with out buildings.
A central point where any small or large tile retailer could send unwanted items, or maybe a database where the retailer coould list ex stock items. I feel someone in the know could be onto a winner in the long term.

Would it be possible for the Tilers Forum to set something up? If all interested parties could submit their surplus products and a page could be set up on the site, it would be a useful point of reference, would drive more visits to the site and most importantly would financially benefit all concerned. I think the only thing that should be avoided is that I personally would'nt want it to be a vehicle for people to offload job lots of complete tat, as far as possible it should be restricted to genuine surplus products that would be useful to the trade. Perhaps each company should be restricted to say 5 products at a time?
It would then be the responsibility of interested parties to liase with each other direct so no responsibilty to the guys who run the forum.

Martin

It would be interesting to see if this could be done. I think Dan would be the man to talk to over this.

Not got and johnsons textured vein or cameo 6 x 6 inch tiles have you in Avocado???

bet they'll be worth a mint!

The best approach IMO would be for tile stockists to list their own surplus on their own websites, or generate a web site dedicated to end of range etc. Each tile/product would have its own page, so Google would find it without a problem, and a positive search result would definitely indicate what the searcher is looking for, rather than the user having to plough through a page of all sorts of rubbish until he comes to what he's looking for.

With the right wording Google would pick up on it, so if I did a search for 6 inch avacado by Pilkingtons then anyone listing that tile or a similar one would have their pages in front of me.

Then when you've disposed of all your stock of that tile, take that page down.