Kayak, Zillow, TrueCar and many other websites have made it easier for people to comparison shop.

Each of these websites has a specialty such as travel, homes or cars.

At Lab Spend, we’ve built a pricing search to help with scientific lab supplies, equipment and chemicals.

It’s easy to use, just enter a catalog number and a price distribution is returned, here’s an example for parafilm:

Instantly, you now have an idea of what the market is paying for a particular item. As you can see from the image above, it is common for labs to purchase a roll of parafilm for about $20. What is also worth noting is that they’re labs paying 3x (~$66) for the same product. Use Lab Spend to ensure it’s not your lab that is paying waaaay too much! Learn from the mistakes of other labs.

You can now leverage this pricing knowledge to see if what you are paying is fair. If your pricing isn’t great, send us a quote in Lab Spend or reach out to manufactures or distributors for better pricing. We value educated customers, try asking your current sales representatives for the price range that they charge for a product.

Historically, it’s been painful to know if you are getting a good price. Often times labs have a single person whether that it is a principle investigator, lab manager or graduate student that does the ordering. This person gains experience and knowledge about products and pricing, but other lab members often miss out. We’re making this process easier as we would rather have scientists doing research or lab manager focused on more important activities than comparison shopping. By using Lab Spend even lab members which are removed from the procurement process can quickly get a since of how much supplies cost, reducing the amount of time (ie. experience) needed to make wise purchasing discussions.