I rode herd on a "group equipment purchase" each year since 2006 for the NYC
novice class, and anyone else who wanted to participate, and I have to agree
with Aaron that things changed while beekeeping was "trendy".  During that
period, the catalog houses did not offer much aggressive "bulk" pricing.  I
have dealt with all the major houses, buying somewhere between 50 and 150
very verbosely complete sets of gear for new beekeepers, from veils to
foundation pins.  The only significant savings enjoyed was the delta between
shipping costs for individual orders versus shipping pallet loads.

In defense of the catalog houses, unless one has need for thousands of
something (rather than hundreds), and can purchase in the slow off-season
(think fall), they do not enjoy much in the way of increased volume or
reduced overhead from your so-called "bulk order", and filling "bulk orders"
can take time and attention away from promptly filling the daily volume of
higher-margin individual orders from internet, phone, and mail.

The better approach is to find alternative lower-profile sources for bulk
purchases, where there is no "mail order" aspect to their business.
I deal with several.

As beekeeping becomes less "trendy", the demand for supplies go back to
"normal", and the perception of an infinite supply of new beekeepers will
fade.  During the "trendy" period several of the catalog houses expanded to
better-serve the larger number of east-of-the-Mississippi hobby beekeepers,
and a few were acquired by people with far sharper pencils to deal with the
end of the "gold rush" era of beekeeping.

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