My Favorite Mistake: The $2,400 Invoice That Didn’t Exist
In 2022, I made a rookie mistake that still stings when I think about it. My company needed a specialty coating for a commercial glass retrofit—about 400 square feet of treated panels across three buildings. I found a supplier who quoted $1.80 per square foot. Our usual vendor was at $2.25. Quick math: save about $180 on materials. Easy decision, right?
Except the invoice came back $2,400 over estimate. Finance rejected it. My VP asked why I hadn’t checked for “minimum order surcharges” and “expedited shipping fees” that weren’t listed on the quote. I ended up reordering from our regular supplier at $2.15 per square foot, plus $400 in rush shipping to meet the deadline. Net savings: negative $2,200 and a bruised reputation.
Here’s what I didn’t know then, and what Eastman Chemical’s 2024 Form 10-K taught me later: the real story of a supplier’s health isn’t in the sales pitch—it’s in the footnotes of their regulatory filings.
