Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Cabinet Doors
Outsourcing cabinet doors works well for teams running short-staffed or struggling to complete projects on time – but what are the risks?
You landed on this page because you wonder if outsourcing your cabinet doors is right for your business. Whether you’re dealing with a staff shortage, struggling to meet deadlines, or burning the midnight oil to stay on track, outsourcing has probably crossed your mind.
But the big question is, can you afford to make this change? Will it impact your reputation with potentially lower quality, higher costs, and late deliveries?
At Cutting Edge, we’ve been crafting cabinet doors for industry professionals – cabinet makers, contractors, renovators, and more – for over 20 years. We get it; outsourcing feels risky. But there are also significant benefits, which is why so many consider it.
So, let’s take a look at both sides of the problem:
Pros of Outsourcing Cabinet Doors
First up are the pros of outsourcing doors. What are the benefits of this solution?
1. Reduces Your Workload
First, outsourcing cabinet doors reduces your workload. Outsourcing will help if you and your team work overtime or weekends to complete projects on time.
What if you didn’t have to worry about making the doors? That would help reduce your stress, right?
Easing their workload is exactly why most customers choose to outsource the doors. Their team is overworked, which leads to mistakes, delayed projects, and unhappy customers. As someone working to become a trusted installer, you can’t risk any of those problems.
Passing the responsibility for cabinet doors on to a cabinet door manufacturer removes that work from your task list entirely, freeing you up to complete other portions of the projects sooner.
2. Reduces Your Expenses
Outsourcing cabinet doors also helps reduce your expenses. The cabinet door manufacturer looks after sourcing, purchasing and stocking the raw lumber. Plus, they already have the machinery needed to produce quality doors in high quantities.
When you order doors from a cabinet door manufacturer, you remove three expenses from your cost:
- Cost of the lumber (including the cost of having the lumber delivered to your shop)
- Cost of the machinery needed to produce the doors
- Labour cost (the time your team spends making the doors)
Yes, you replace those expenses with the cost of the cabinet doors. However, you would rarely spend more on outsourced than on doors made in-house.
3. Shortens Your Lead Times
Next, outsourcing cabinet doors allows you to shorten your lead times. Let’s assume it typically takes your team two or three days to make the cabinet boxes and a week to make the doors. Providing you order the doors before you start on the cabinet boxes, you can cut around a week (or more, depending on the order size) off your lead time.
This is a conservative estimate because we aren’t accounting for the time needed for site measures, countertops, installation, finishing and all the other details that go into a project.
However, you need to understand your supplier lead times for outsourcing to shorten your lead time. For example, if your supplier takes two weeks to produce the doors, you need to place the order that much sooner so you receive the cabinet doors as soon as you are ready for them.
4. Increases Your Capacity and Capability
Finally, outsourcing doors allows you to increase your capacity and expand your product range.
Maybe you can only produce two or three kitchens a year because of the time your team requires to complete each project.
However, once you eliminate the time it takes to make the cabinet doors, you will find your team members have more time to spend designing, making cabinet boxes, and completing projects.
In addition, cabinet door makers usually have a much larger range of products than you and your team can achieve. They already have the specialized equipment and the ability to customize their offerings.
Increasing both your capacity and product range helps you to increase your profit margins and improve your reputation as you turn fewer jobs down.
Cons of Outsourcing Cabinet Doors
However, outsourcing doors isn’t a perfect solution. At Cutting Edge, we have experienced both sides – those who love and who hate outsourcing.
Those who hate outsourcing have the same four complaints.
1. Less Control Over Lead Time and Quality
Outsourcing products reduces your control. Your supplier decides both the quality and lead time of the products.
You can gain some control by discussing your quality and lead time expectations with your potential supplier before you place your first order. Communicating your concerns and requirements will go a long way toward ensuring you receive the products you need when you need them.
However, cabinet door suppliers aren’t perfect. They will make mistakes that affect the quality and lead time. So, outsourcing isn’t a good solution if your reputation hinges on stringent quality expectations and set-in-stone deadlines.
2. Limited Product Selection and Customizability
Typically, this isn’t an issue because cabinet door manufacturers have the machinery and experts to produce a much wider range of products than a cabinet shop.
However, you might be an exception if you have specialized equipment and highly qualified carpenters on staff. In this case, your team might be able to produce customized doors on a quicker timeline than cabinet door manufacturers.
How could this be possible?
To remain efficient and profitable, cabinet door manufacturers prefer to focus on high-quantity, high-quality components – and may even limit their product range to standardized sizes and options.
3. Seems More Expensive
As a cabinet maker or contractor, you might not pay much attention to the real cost of making your doors in-house. For example, you might not consider the expense of the lumber, the time your employees take making the cabinet doors to your quality requirements, or the number of times you have to remake defective pieces.
Often, outsourced doors seem more expensive. For one thing, the cost is right there in front of you, and you need to pay before you get the product. Making your cabinet doors in-house hides or disguises some of the expense.
Unless you pay close attention to your expenses, you may think that outsourced cabinet doors are more expensive than the cabinet doors you make.
On the other hand, you might actually be able to make the doors in-house for less money. Either way, you can’t be sure until you perform a detailed cost comparison.
4. Leaves You With Too Little Work
And finally, outsourcing doors may leave you with too little work to retain your current staff. Usually, you should be able to expand your business to keep all your employees busy. However, this isn’t always so, especially in remote or rural areas.
So, if outsourcing cabinet doors means you must lay off experienced craftsmen, consider other options first.
When You Should Consider Outsourcing Doors
What does this information boil down to?
Outsourcing cabinet doors is a good option if you are way too busy, don’t have enough staff to meet the demand, and want to take on more projects.
By reducing your workload, you increase your capacity. This allows you to increase your profits, make more customers happy, and improve your reputation.
When Outsourcing Cabinet Doors Won’t Work For You
On the other hand, outsourcing cabinet doors isn’t a good option for you if you:
- Have a large team skilled at making doors in-house, and the machinery needed to create high-quality results at a relatively low cost.
- Have stringent quality requirements and frequently take on highly custom, luxury projects. In this case, you make the profit needed to cover the expense of making your cabinet doors in-house and can’t afford the risk of low-quality or delayed products.
- Don’t want to lose control over your quality and lead time.
Any of these or similar scenarios indicates that you are better off without making a change. Outsourcing cabinet doors will simply lead to frustration, extra expense, and warranty issues.
Find Out How the Price Compares
You can’t continue working overtime and weekends just to avoid the risk of outsourcing cabinet doors. However, you also can’t afford to spend money on low-quality, outsourced cabinet doors.
You need more information before you can make an educated decision – and Cutting Edge is here to guide you through that process.
Now that you have the information you need to decide whether outsourcing might be an option, it’s time for you to see how the expense compares. Can you save money by outsourcing cabinet doors? Your next step is to find out how to get a quote online from Cutting Edge and perform a price comparison at your own pace.
