Manufacturer list letters reprice your bid three times
Your material has no spot price. It moves when a manufacturer mails a list-price letter, and in 2026 that happened in waves across thirty-plus brands.
Copper has a public number a wire puller can watch and hedge against. Your cost moves when a manufacturer mails a letter, on their schedule, with a short window before the new list takes effect. Escalation language on a hard-bid finish package is almost never granted, so every dollar of movement between quote date and purchase order date is on you.
The size of it
On a package where hardware is most of the cost, a mid-single-digit list move between bid and buyout eats the money in that opening group before a single door hangs.
Price the package off the distributor quote, then watch the letters. Door hardware moves by manufacturer list-price letter, and 2026 brought increases across more than thirty brands. Allegion came in at 3 to 10 percent, Dormakaba at 5.5 to 11.5, Townsteel at 18, Ilco at 7 to 22, and several manufacturers raised twice or three times inside the same year. You bid off a quote and you buy after submittal approval, which can be a quarter later.
Three moves, in order
Step 04: Estimating system
The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears.
What else costs door and hardware contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What door and hardware owners ask
Manufacturer raised prices after I bid the hardware package?
Your material has no spot price. It moves when a manufacturer mails a list-price letter, and in 2026 that happened in waves across thirty-plus brands.
What does it cost?
On a package where hardware is most of the cost, a mid-single-digit list move between bid and buyout eats the money in that opening group before a single door hangs.
What do I do first?
Put the quote date and the quote expiration on the face of every hardware bid you send, in the same spot every time.
What are door and hardware contractors supposed to be making?
No survey separates door and hardware, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Interiors, which runs 19% gross margin, 13% overhead and 6% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not door and hardware's own. Read them as the neighbourhood, and read your own job costing as the answer.
Which part of the system fixes it?
The step is number 04, estimating system. The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears. It comes from chapter 4 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for door and hardware contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.