For Industrial Use Only

Factual Questions
1

What is the difference between products marked with “For Industrial Use Only” that you see in offices/hospitals/etc. and store bought versions of the same thing? Just the cost, or is it different formulations?

…Besides the obvious “Industrial Use” Kleenex tissues which seem to be heavy-duty sandpaper rejected for being too coarse…

2
      • I worked for a convenience store that bought some Pine-Sol in “institutional size” containers once. And the s*&% didn’t work. Like normal Pine-Sol does. Normal Pine-Sol cleans very well, but this stuff beaded up on the floor: it looked and smelled the same, but it was almost like colored scented water. If you poured a bit of it into a regular bottle of retail Pine-Sol, you could see that the two were different, because they didn’t exactly mix real well. ~ I think that basically in this instance, the “institutional” stuff was just a plain ripoff. It was cheaper, but it didn’t work - but the person in charge of buying it isn’t likely to know that. - MC
3

In some cases, I believe, the industrial stuff is more concentrated, or just more durable. Hospital cleaners may need to live up to a higher standard than household cleaners. Plus household cleaners may better fit the demand of the consumer, such as clean and nice smelling. Also, it may have to do with the packaging.

4

I would guess one of three possibilities:

(1) The item is a chemical in a concentration too strong to be legal for common home use. This would apply to cleaners mainly, although pesticides would fall under the same heading. In this case, the warning is that the place the chemical is being sold to is supposed to have licensed and trained individuals using the product in question.

(2) The item is too cheaply made for the company to want it sold for home use. This may include toiletries like facial tissue and toilet paper.

(3) The product is sold in larger sizes or in case allotments to companies and facilities and is being sold for a cheaper price than the manufacturer gets from retail sales. This probably links in number Two, in that those cheap facial tissues are probably bought in cases of 60 boxes of tissue each with a price per box being about ninety cents as opposed to $2.00 at the store. Even if not of lesser quality, they’re porbably still selling those gallon sized bottles of Windex for a cheaper price per ounce than you’re getting at the store.

5

There may be packaging issues also - childproof tops, special warning labels, etc. for consumer packages but not for industrial packages.

6

Both Jophiel and Starfish are right. I work for a chemical distribution company and we sell most of our chemicals in the “professional use only” containers. Another thing to consider is consumer liabilty. Some of the chemicals are really raw versions of standard retail products. As for the pine cleaner not working, you’d have to check the label for proper mixing instructions. We sell a pine concentrate that is mxed 1oz to a gallon of water!