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How ABNetwork Helps Small Builders Compete with Volume Builders

If you build one, five, ten, or twenty homes a year, you already know the problem. Volume builders buy materials by the truckload and pay a fraction of what you pay for the same products. They have in-house estimators, dedicated admin teams, and showrooms clients can walk through before they've even signed a contract. You're doing all of that yourself, between job sites, with none of the buying power.

 

That gap is exactly what Australian Builders Network (ABNetwork) was built to close.

 

ABNetwork is a membership network for small-to-medium builders — the kind of operation run by people who'd rather be on site than buried in supplier negotiations. Members get access to big-builder pricing, a product showroom, accurate estimating tools, and the admin support that volume builders take for granted. All of it for less than the cost of a single trade's call-out fee per week.

 

Here's how it actually works, and how it helps you compete on a more even footing. (If you'd rather skip ahead, you can see membership plans and pricing here right now.)

Why Small Builders Are Stuck at a Structural Disadvantage

It's worth being honest about what's actually happening in the market, because it isn't a quality problem — it's a scale problem. Volume builders typically run multiple projects simultaneously across multiple sites, which lets them commit to bulk purchase agreements with suppliers months or years in advance. Suppliers reward that predictability with better unit pricing, priority stock allocation, and dedicated account management.

None of that is available to a builder running one or two jobs at a time, no matter how good the work is. Unless you choose to purchase lower-quality building materials or deal with suppliers that are here today and gone tomorrow, which is unfortunately another challenge facing our industry.

One key consideration is warranty support. If a supplier is no longer in business when a warranty claim arises, who will stand behind the product and honour those obligations? Choosing reputable, established suppliers provides greater confidence not only in product quality but also in the long-term support and warranty protection available to both builders and their clients.
The same scale advantage shows up in overheads. A volume builder can justify an in-house estimating department because the cost gets spread across dozens of projects a year. A small builder doing the same thing for five or six homes a year would be adding a full-time salary to a handful of projects — the math doesn't work, so most small builders end up estimating manually, after hours, on top of everything else.

It compounds further at the client-facing end. Volume builders can afford a display showroom because the foot traffic and project volume justify the lease and fit-out. A small builder sending clients to more than five separate supplier showrooms across the city to pick tiles, tapware, and bricks is offering a worse experience through no fault of their own — it's simply not viable to build that infrastructure for a handful of projects a year.

None of these are skill or quality gaps. They're infrastructure gaps that come purely from scale. And infrastructure gaps can be solved collectively, even if they can't be solved individually.

The Problem: Small Builders Pay More for the Same Materials

Material costs aren't fixed. Suppliers price based on volume — the more a builder commits to buying, the more leverage they have at the negotiating table. A builder doing 200+ homes a year is negotiating from a completely different position than a builder doing 8.

This isn't a secret, and it isn't unfair. It's just how procurement works. The problem is that most small-to-medium builders have no way to access that same leverage on their own. You can't individually negotiate the kind of pricing a volume builder gets — there simply isn't enough buying power behind one operator.

That's where a builder buying group changes the equation. When a large quantity of builders pool their purchasing power, suppliers start treating that group the way they'd treat a major builder — because in volume terms, that's exactly what it is.

What ABNetwork Actually Does

ABNetwork is a procurement and services network, not a software subscription or a directory listing. Founded by Steve Yagmur, a third-generation builder who understood the cost problem from the inside, ABNetwork has spent over 14 years building relationships with suppliers and refining what small-to-medium builders actually need to compete.

Today, the network's builder members expand across Melbourne, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, collectively responsible for more than 3,500 homes built each year. That combined volume is what gives ABNetwork members access to pricing from 90+ supplier partners — including major names like Bunnings, Austral Bricks, CSR Monier, Polytec, Haymes Paint, James Hardie, and Beaumont Tiles — that would otherwise be out of reach for an individual small builder.

Membership starts from $49+GST per month — roughly $13 a week. For most members, that cost is recovered many times over on a single project.

This is the core of what ABNetwork does. Instead of negotiating supplier pricing alone, members buy as part of a large network. On average, ABNetwork members save $5,000–$15,000 per project on materials — savings that go straight to the builder's margin, or get passed on to win more competitive client quotes. Members can save up to 20–30% on single supplier purchases such as timber, trusses, and windows.


The supplier list spans the categories that matter most on a typical build: structural materials, tiles, tapware, bricks, windows, doors, and more — all from suppliers builders already know and trust, just at pricing previously reserved for high-volume builders.

One of the advantages volume builders have is the ability to show clients a physical product selection experience — a showroom where a client can see, touch, and choose materials in one visit instead of being sent to five different supplier outlets.


ABNetwork's Tullamarine showroom gives members exactly that, without needing to build or lease one themselves. It's a single space presented with tapware, tiles, bricks, windows, and doors from the network's supplier partners, set up so builders can bring clients through and finalise selections efficiently. It removes a huge piece of friction from the client experience — and it's one of the most consistently praised parts of membership.

Following the completion of his home in Craigieburn, Ibrahim Kunduraci, a client of an ABNetwork member, had this to say about his experience:

 

I built my home in Craigieburn and the builder's access to the ABNetwork really made a difference. The showroom made product selection simple, and their quoting/estimation system was spot on and very accurate. Fast, affordable, and professional! Highly recommend!

 

— Ibrahim Kunduraci, Client of an ABNetwork member

You can view the showroom and book a visit here.

Quoting accurately and quickly is one of the biggest operational headaches for small builders. Get it wrong and you either lose the job on price or lose money delivering it. Volume builders solve this with dedicated estimating teams and live supplier data — resources most small operators don't have.

ABNetwork has a platinum partnership with both Buildxact Estimating Software and Wunderbuild Construction Management Software, both built with live, up-to-date ABNetwork price files from the network's supplier partners. That means quotes reflect real current pricing, not guesswork or outdated rate cards. Members consistently report this as one of the most time-saving tools in their membership — cutting hours of manual pricing work down to minutes per quote.

Everything a member needs — supplier price files, booking systems, documentation, and account access — lives in one cloud-based portal, available any time. No chasing suppliers individually for pricing updates, no juggling separate logins and spreadsheets. It's the kind of centralised system volume builders build internally; ABNetwork members get it as part of membership.

Running a small building business usually means the builder is also the estimator, the bookkeeper, and the client liaison — often all in the same afternoon. ABNetwork members report saving roughly 50 hours of admin per project through the network's tools and outsourcing support, time that goes back into running and growing the business rather than paperwork.

Client-facing services like colour selection are typically the domain of larger builders with dedicated design staff. ABNetwork members can offer their clients a professional colour consultation service through the network with a small fee — another way to deliver a volume-builder-level client experience without the volume-builder overhead.

Why This Matters: Competing on More Than Just Price

Volume builders win on scale. But scale isn't the only thing that wins clients. Small-to-medium builders generally offer something volume builders can't: a direct, personal relationship with the person actually building the home. ABNetwork is built to remove the cost and operational disadvantages of being small — without asking builders to give up the things that make them better to work with in the first place.

As Marc Le Miere from National Masonry describes it:

Australian Builders Network have an inspiring showroom and a great range of building materials at competitive pricing. Communication is clear, timely and they truly care about delivering value to their clients.

— Marc Le Miere, ABNetwork supplier partner

It's also a network with a track record, not a startup experiment. ABNetwork is a 14+ year relationship between a builder-led network and the supplier industry — that history matters, because supplier
pricing relationships are built on trust and consistent volume over time, not signed up overnight. In 2025, that track record was recognised with an Australian Business Award win, independent
confirmation of the value the network delivers.

Who ABNetwork Is For

ABNetwork is built for small-to-medium residential builders — typically those building anywhere from 1 to 50 homes a year, primarily across Victoria, with the network continuing to expand nationally. Whether you're a sole operator scaling up, a small partnership juggling multiple jobs, or an established small building company looking to protect margins against rising material costs, the model works the same way: the more builders in the network, the stronger the collective buying power for everyone in it.

It's also worth being clear about who it's not aimed at. ABNetwork isn't a licensing body, an advocacy group, or a training provider — builders still need their own licensing and association memberships for that. What ABNetwork adds is the commercial and operational layer: the buying power, the showroom, the software, and the admin support that sits on top of running a compliant, licensed building business.

Frequently Asked Questions

ABNetwork is a procurement and services network, not a software subscription or a directory listing.
Founded by Steve Yagmur, a third-generation builder who understood the cost problem from the inside, ABNetwork has spent over 14 years building relationships with suppliers and refining what small-to-medium builders actually need to compete.

Today, the network's builder members expand across Melbourne, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, collectively responsible for more than 3,500 homes built each year. That combined volume is what gives ABNetwork members access to pricing from 90+ supplier partners — including major names like Bunnings, Austral Bricks, CSR Monier, Polytec, Haymes Paint, James Hardie, and Beaumont Tiles — that would otherwise be out of reach for an individual small builder.

Membership starts from $49+GST per month — roughly $13 a week. For most members, that cost is
recovered many times over on a single project.
Membership starts from $49+GST per month, with no lock-in contracts. See full membership plans and pricing here.
Members typically save between $5,000 and $15,000 per project on materials, depending on the scope and scale of the build, plus significant time savings on admin and estimating. Members have also proven to save up to 20–30% on single supplier purchases such as timber, trusses, or windows.
No — ABNetwork is specifically built for small-to-medium builders, typically those completing 1–50 homes per year. You don't need volume-builder scale to access volume-builder pricing; that's the entire point of a collective buying network.
The showroom is located in Tullamarine, Victoria, and is available to Premium members in Victoria for client product selection appointments. Book a showroom visit.
ABNetwork members can take advantage of powerful estimating software integrated with live ABNetwork price files, enabling fast, accurate, and professional quoting. Available at an exclusive discounted subscription rate through our software partners Buildxact and Wunderbuild, the platform gives members access to real-time pricing and streamlined estimating tools, helping save time, improve accuracy, and increase profitability.
Industry associations like Master Builders and HIA focus on licensing, advocacy, training, and documentation such as building contracts and legal advice. ABNetwork is a procurement and services network — its core purpose is collective buying power, supplier discounts, a physical showroom, and operational tools. Many builders are members of both for different reasons.

Start Competing on a Bigger Builder's Terms

Small-to-medium builders don't need to operate at a permanent disadvantage against volume builders. With the right buying power, the right tools, and the right support behind you, it's possible to offer clients similar pricing, the same product experience, and the same quoting accuracy — without carrying the overheads a volume builder needs to get there.

 

Join builders in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania who've already made the switch.

 

Enquire About ABNetwork Membership or Get in touch with the ABNetwork team to find out how much your business could save on its next project.

Start Competing on a Bigger Builder's Terms

Small-to-medium builders don't need to operate at a permanent disadvantage against volume builders. With the right buying power, the right tools, and the right support behind you, it's possible to offer clients similar pricing, the same product experience, and the same quoting accuracy — without carrying the overheads a volume builder needs to get there.

 

Join builders in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania who've already made the switch.

 

Enquire About ABNetwork Membership or Get in touch with the ABNetwork team to find out how much your business could save on its next project.

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