Whyte Camper Van

Suppliers & Costs

Finding a supplier for the part you need and at a good price takes a lot of time.

Amazon is great but is certainly not the cheapest way of buying parts for your van.

Amazon

Love it or hate it Amazon is out there.

To be honest I use Amazon but I try not to as I think it has killed too many outlets and is like Facebook and Google in acquiring everything about you to make more money. The other reason is that it is not often the cheapest place to buy things. I have found that it is great for finding items and suppliers but often going direct to the supplier's website can be cheaper. Amazon is great for efficient delivery and returns. So, if you only care about sending something back and want it tomorrow then stick to Amazon.

Amazon is also popular with websites, bloggers, vloggers and self-promoting influencers because it MAKES THEM MONEY!

Amazon runs a service called Associates (or Affiliates) which is designed to make you money by promoting Amazon and its services. If you sign up then every time somebody buys on Amazon via your website/channel then you get either a fee or percentage. This fee can be £1-£15 depending upon the service and the percentage can be between 1 and 10% of the spend.

The spend is not just the item you clicked on via the website. When you click on the link on someone's site you get linked to their affiliates code via cookies and your sign-in to Amazon. This link is valid for 24 hours so, everything you buy in the next 24 hours will give some income to the site owner that you casually clicked on. The fee is valid for items you put in your basket for the next 90 days. You click on a £1 widget on a site that takes you to Amazon and you think nothing of it. You then go back to Amazon 12 hours later (the next day) and buy a camera for £1000. The owner of the widget site get a percentage of that £1000 just for sending you to Amazon 12 hours before. It is easy to see how popular site can make a good income form this. But it is all about volume of visits to your site.

This is the reason you find so many review sites that don't really review the item but just give a brief description and then a link to buying it on Amazon. These are automated site just set-up to make money.

Sites also make money out of click throughs to Amazon. So even if you don't buy anything the traffic a site passes to Amazon can also generate an income as Amazon is playing the long game and hoping you will eventually buy something if you keep visiting.

I have no issue with this but just be aware that this is what happens.

There are many reasons why a company is cheaper on its own site rather than Amazon. Amazon is flooded with fake products and fake reviews. This makes it very difficult to wade through the lists of products to find a quality product at good price. Companies must make money and Amazon leads to the price being the only differentiator and its quickly goes to the bottom. So, companies keep the price high and if one drops it by £10, within seconds so do the others. No gain but loss in profit. On their own website they can put whatever price they are happy with.

Spend Time Looking at What You Are Buying

Remember just because something is a low cost does not make it good value.

Buying a drill bit for 10p may sound good but if it doesn't even drill 1 hole then it's 10p wasted. The £3 drill bit that lasts years was a better investment. I know you can't apply this to everything as we don't all have limitless budgets and we have to make choices. But make these as educated choices. I have bought parts from Chinese sites thinking they'll be fine but when you get them you realise that they have managed to do a fanastic job in making a new kind of metal that looks great but is as strong as Play-doh.

If it looks like a price that is too good then it is probably not that good!

Suppliers

As I'm just doing this site for my own records, I'm happy to list all the suppliers I found during my build. I did create a costing spreadsheet and list of suppliers so that I could calculate how much the van actually cost me (I spent about £10k on equipment and tools). I also acquired a huge number of weblink from all the sites I visited. I'm trying to add these links as I post each stage of the build but here, I'll list all the suppliers and links to the main site. This should hopefully give you a start on where to look for parts. I didn't necesariliy buy anything from these sites but they may be useful to someone else. I have also include lots of sites that are just good for background information and details Correct in 2022 - some site may have gone!.