Fitted kitchen mark-ups

Nedpoleon

I'm talking to a London-based supplier of German kitchens about having a new kitchen installed. A few of the smaller items in the quote seemed priced surprisingly high so I had a look online. They priced a power converter at £78 that I found retail for £21, and they priced a knife block at £138 that I found retail for £52 i.e. their prices are 300/400% over retail, even though they boast about having close relationships with suppliers.

I asked them about this and they initially said they don't get the volume discounts that some shops do and they can't just buy the items retail because the supply might not be reliable – and if I bought the items retail myself, they would refuse to install them. Then they came back to me and said that in fact they could get the power converter for £23 after all.

I don't really care about the extra fifty quid in the context of a new kitchen, but it makes me worry about the more expensive stuff where the pricing is more opaque so I can't just check it online – how do I know they're not offering a terrible deal? Am I right to distrust them a bit now?

System

Their business is to make a profit on reselling a product so of course they have a markup - either you are happy with the price they have quoted for the kitchen or you're not, if you're not go to other suppliers and see how their product and price compares.
They likely have products they know and are happy to use and just pass the costs on to you, you could likely source every individual component of the kitchen cheaper, and so could they - but they're probably not going to google every bit of a kitchen every time they price one

spadoosh

You need to distrust any price give to you by a kitchen seller really.

A fun experiment for you, get the exact layout of a kitchen you want, choose any retailer, go to two different stores using the exact same specs and see if they come out the same price, i bet they dont.