I got my cabinets a couple of years back from Scherr's Custom Cabinets and Doors ( http://www.scherrs.com ) which I learned about through reading this forum. They are a great company to work with, and they truly are a custom shop. You specify what you want and they manufacture it. In my kitchen on one section of one wall I had 51" to work with, and had them make a 34" wide two door cabinet and a 17" wide single door cabinet. On another wall the base cabinets and the uppers are 3" deeper than normal. On a third wall I had them make a 44" wide cabinet with two 15" doors and a 14" wide open space for a wire wine rack. Here is an image of the cabinets in the kitchen which links to a slideshow of other images. As well as an overhead view showing the layout. For all of the cabinets pictured here, the price was $17400 + about $800 shipping. Included in that price was plywood construction, full extension slides and 170 deg Blum hinges, and pullouts in every non-drawer cabinet. The cabinets are very well constructed, and are designed to be easy to assemble well and easy to install correctly.

Do not let Holly Springs discourage you if you really want to open your store.. Your premise is to save money instead of making more by how your post was worded. If the importer does not have the sales in your area they want happening they will set you up if you can present yourself as a person who can sell their products. I have called and got set up with prob 25 cabinet companies in the last 5 years. About half of those were import companies I decided quickly were not for me after really learning how they work and the rest were semi custom and a few custom companies.... There are a lot to chose from. The Import lines are not as tough on you if they are not the most well know brand names. If you are to close to an established dealer the sales person respects you will be out of luck... I had a cabinet handles company not set me up cause a I was a mile or so from another person that had a few styles they kept in stock inside their showroom. The sales person asked the company if they minded me getting an account being that close and they asked I not be set up. I mean..... really cabinet handles and so the sales person would not set me up. I thought that was very petty of the other company as we did not know each other in any other way.... No one can pay their bills off the margins of cabinet handles. I have a $300,000 dealer cost in 3 years of sales commitment to American Woodmark in our new showroom. I decided to use them this last summer. If I do not meet the goal I have to pay for the sales center with all the doors on it.. There are 3 of us in a 2 mile radius that have them. In my area I would guess there are 25 kitchen and bath showrooms and a Lowes in 5 mile radius. Competition is insane. The commercial space rents lower there then many other parts of Northern Va.... The sales person set me up as she believed in the experience I portrayed in my conversation to her. The other 2 do not sell a lot and are live and let live businesses..... They will close your account if there is not enough sales though when they see a better business to switch to.... Starmark closed several accounts in the DC area for what they felt was lack of sales against the wishes of the local sales rep... So it happens... RTA cabinets tend to not be as sophisticated in sales if you are not looking at JSI, TSG, Fabuwood etc... They are the larger players on the East Coast. River Run has grown a lot they used to be easy to get along with as a dealer. They have lost touch with the needs of the dealers in many respects... If you are looking at some of the others that do not have the brand name you may get an easier account.... I started the kitchen business with Armstrong I called them to sell their products and it turns out they did not have a commercial lease requirement. I did it as a contractor offering my cabinets on the jobs I did the renovation work on. I then got set up with Sunco. They closed my account a year or so later for not enough sales and me telling them it was difficult to have people always want their limited selection of sizes and colors as an RTA line... They did not like hearing that and the account was closed the next day... Others have been happy go lucky and I have accounts still open that I have not made a purchase on in several years... Those businesses are happy with their sales and not trying to get to the moon and will work with you over the long term. They generally do not have good websites and are not real business savy. Most of their sales are price driven more then quality and selection. They know it and are content where they are in the overall market.... I have never worked for an established kitchen and bath company. My background is general contractor and in my 30's tried to figure out how to not need workers that drive you nuts. I used to do all the designs for the projects I did and realized kitchen and bath cabinet design was a micro of that. No one taught me how to get accounts, I learned the product lines myself studying the spec books, I learned pro kitchen software on my own, I then switched to 2020 and learned that on my own and I have learned soft plan on my own. Every company I know I have learned by studying the books. I started using Marsh Furniture this last winter. They are not overly complicated but they do have their own way of doing things that is annoying to learn at first. The sales rep said I have learned their program with no help faster then any other person he has ever set up. It is trial by fire... If you have the will to learn those things you will get your own accounts. If you just think you are paying to much and want a lower price and deserve it you may or may not pull of what you want to do... Holly springs is right that last months sales are not enough for our business to be viable long term. I teamed up with two other people last year and decided to stat a new place with them using their business name. I switched all the accounts to reflect that and added several new suppliers to the line up. My partners were my most frequent buyers of cabinets so their business was construction. It will take a while to get the same name recognized as a dealer of products. We have not even finished our showroom. If you start one you will realize it is easy to wake up and think of a better way to do things then the plan from the day before and make adjustments to things as you go. We have 5 kitchens and 11 bathrooms none of which have countertops on them yet. Last month we did pretty good considering the showroom is no where near complete in the normal sense of the word. Currently none of the displays have painted walls, no countertops installed, no back splashes yet, hoods without blowers installed etc... We do not even have handles on the cabinets that are installed. To do a real showroom it takes a lot of time, a lot of patience to create the right idea, I have designed 100 kitchens on computer for our showroom with completely different uses of space since the lease was signed. We considered putting the kitchens in the warehouse sections of our building which has a much higher ceiling. We considered the kitchens to be in a single room, We had them spread around a walking path approach for a while. The three of us are so different we rarely agree totally on everything. Usually one of us does not like what the other 2 do for anything you can think in setting up the space. After you get past basic layout of space you have so much trial and error in which companies are good suppliers / manufacturers that it takes a while to get it off the ground. If you are not trying to just duplicate your previous employers place per say you will learn some companies just do not have it together after you make the investment to display them. It is tough to get it all right the first day... The American dream is a great thing. It will crush you for longer then you prefer while you find your place in the sun in this business..... You may have it easy as you already have a demand created for the products you are looking for. It will go one way or the other for you if you try to get set up direct...

I know this is an old post, but I just came across it and just wanted to post an updated comment, especially in regards to "rtacabinetstore.com". Wish I had read this thread BEFORE I placed my order from them a few months ago for their Marquis Cinnamon cabinets. I had ordered a sample door and it looked pretty nice, so I went ahead and ordered my cabinets. They are of unbelievably poor quality, made in China. Some of the prices were missing stain in spots and polyurethane. The drawer sides are thin and cheap, pieced wood. Some pre drilled holes were drilled wrong, so we had to use a Dremel to correct in order to use the cam locks. I am still trying to get the issues resolved since January. I kept them because they are going in a 2nd rarely used kitchen in the basement that got destroyed during Hurricane Irene, but I would NEVER, I mean NEVER use these for my primary kitchen! I have photos of some of the poor quality if anyone wants to see them...I'd be happy to email them. I wish it had worked out better...I had high hopes that it was going to be a cost effective way to redo both kitchens in the house and all three bathrooms, which are all 40 years old and in need of updating. Plus my brother wanted to redo his kitchen and my mom her bathroom, so this was our trial run. Never again would I buy from them! They lost a lot of future business with this poor example of the quality of their products. Beware of rtacabinetstore.com!

An alternative strategy, assuming you have the time: craigslist. I own or manage a half dozen rental properties. Mostly I upgrade lighting, etc. , when a place turns over. Over the last decade, I have redone the kitchens in two of the most spacious and desirable rentals, going for good quality used cabinets as opposed to moderately priced but not very nice new cabinets. The first one was a house we were renovating, so I had time to haunt craigslist, ebay, etc. to accumulate the bits of the kitchen while work was being done on other parts of the house. In my prideful frugality, I posted the saga of that kitchen on Gardenweb, at http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2421625/heres-my-recycled-kitchen-show-me-yours The recent one was earlier this year, a pretty large kitchen in a three-unit 1895 building. I did not have so much leisure on this project, but I was able to buy not only cabinets but counters used on craigslist. I cannot say that the results blow me away, but improvement was great, and the worst decision I made was on the floor tile, which is brand new and not cheap but boring. The kitchen put in when the building was renovated in the 1980s had cheap and badly installed tile floors and minimal builders grade cabinets, with uppers only 30" tall in a 9.5 foot high kitchen. The "fancy" bits were a closet depth pantry and an unsealed exposed brick wall where the backsplash would have been been on the non-window side of the kitchen. I do not have photos of the before. For the renovation, I bought good quality maple cabinets with 42" uppers from Baltimore for $2k and a large quantity of used Mont Blanc Silestone from DC, which also ran about $2k with the installation. I used pendant lights instead of cans in the ceiling, because I could not find an affordable cans that work well with such high ceilings. The backsplash tiles -- actually in colors of gold and blue but on such a small scale that they register as textured neutral -- came from Overstock. The several leftover cabinets were adopted via freecycle, along with the original sink and appliances; the leftover Silestone I will use in bathroom of another property. I should say that I am one of those people who likes the idea of designing a kitchen but am a bit too scattered to do it without constraints. The fact of a specific set of cabinets is a context in which other decisions are basically problem solving. This approach would not work for everyone. Some people would say it does not work that well for me either, but I do have fun. Best of luck on your new rental kitchen, whichever strategy you choose.