The Difference Between a Flume Reseller and a Flume Manufacturer

When comparing flumes from different companies ask one simple question first:

Do you actually make the product yourself?

If not, keep moving.

Why?

Quality control and technical expertise.

Companies that don’t make the product have limited, if any, control over construction and quality. While useful and critical to measuring the flow of water, flumes aren’t manufactured in mass. In aggregate, across all manufacturers, there are probably only a few thousand flumes made each year WORLDWIDE. This covers the mom-and-pop fabricator all the way up to the industry leaders.

So while outsourcing may work for Walmart, Apple, or Amazon, no reseller can bring sufficient market weight to dictate with certainty materials, fabrication methods, or quality standards to a contract manufacturer. Even when a reseller relies on a single outside company for production, that company is independent from the reseller with its own methods and financial goals. Unless the reseller has dedicated staff on site at the independent manufacturer – and they won’t due to the cost and limited market – there is no practical way for the reseller to guarantee that the reseller does what is says it will / uses the methods and materials that is has agreed to. While the reseller can make spot quality control inspections, lacking a fundamental grasp on the basics of flume construction mean that these inspections are cursory at best.

At Openchannelflow, we come from both a reseller that presented itself as a manufacturer and a sub-contractor to that reseller. In neither case were we happy with the process and it was only by bringing the two together were we able to realize the quality that we knew could be built into the product.