What is net pricing in lighting?
Net pricing — manufacturer net — is the actual price a lighting manufacturer charges for a fixture before any channel markup: the factory's real number for a given catalog configuration and volume. Everything above net is the chain's compensation — rep commission and overage, distributor margin, contractor markup. Owners almost never see net, because the channel's business model depends on them not seeing it; net-plus-fee procurement is the model that puts it on the table.
Net, list, and quoted — three different numbers
List price is the published catalog number — a fiction almost nobody pays, useful mainly as a discounting reference. Net is what the factory actually charges into its channel for a specific configuration. Quoted price is what reaches your project after the chain adds its layers. The three can be wildly far apart: the industry's own documented example is a fixture netting $1,000 quoted into a project at $4,000.
The spread between net and quoted is governed by overage economics — the rep typically keeps about half of everything above net, on top of a ~5% commission, before distributor and contractor margins stack. Which number your budget is built on determines who that spread belongs to.
Why net is kept from owners
Net pricing is released under channel discipline: manufacturers publish it to reps and distributors, not end customers, because the overage system only functions while the buyer can't see the floor. An owner who calls a rep asking for net is asking the rep to zero out their own compensation — the answer is a quoted price with the spread already inside it.
This is also why lump-sum lighting quotes are the norm. Line items without cost basis, package prices without line items — the format isn't laziness, it's protection for the spread.
Net-plus-fee: pricing you can audit
Net-plus-fee procurement inverts the format: every line priced at manufacturer net, freight and tax shown separately, and one disclosed procurement fee for the service — sourcing, submittals, lead-time tracking, freight and claims management. The owner sees exactly what the fixtures cost and exactly what the coordination costs, and the agent's compensation doesn't grow when the fixture price does.
That last point is the structural one. On net-plus-fee, there is no overage to defend, no margin in substitutions, and no reason to inflate a line — the incentive points the same direction as the owner's budget. It's the pricing model behind every Brilliant Light Source package across 180+ manufacturer lines.
Using net pricing on your project
You don't need to reform the channel to benefit — you need one net-based reference for your own fixture schedule. A free benchmark prices the schedule at net plus fee, line by line, and lays it against any quote in hand. From there the owner chooses: negotiate the channel down, or buy direct and keep the spread — roughly 15% of pure markup, plus sales-tax savings in ODP states. Either way, the negotiation finally happens on the real number — the discipline behind $847M procured across 2,400+ projects.
Questions that come next
Is manufacturer net the same for everyone?
No — net varies with volume, program relationships, and configuration. But the variance between buyers is small compared to the spread between net and typical quoted prices. For benchmarking purposes, current commercial net is the reference that matters.
How is a procurement fee different from a markup?
Disclosure and direction. A markup is undisclosed and grows with the fixture price — the seller wins when you pay more. A fee is stated up front on top of visible net cost — the agent earns the same whether the package prices high or low, so the incentive is to keep net down, not up.
Can I hold my existing supplier to net-plus-fee?
You can ask any lighting vendor the one clarifying question: will you show me manufacturer net on every line? Channel players generally can't say yes — overage is their compensation. The answer sorts the market for you in one sentence.
Does net-plus-fee cost more on small packages?
On very small scopes, a disclosed fee can rival the markup it replaces — transparency doesn't automatically mean cheaper at small scale. The crossover comes quickly with package size; by mid six figures the removed markup typically exceeds the fee several times over.