Most buyers focus on price per bottle. That's the wrong number. The question everyone asks is 'which cleaner is cheapest?' The question they should ask is 'what are we actually paying for?' I'd rather buy Simonis X1 pool table cleaner at a higher sticker price than gamble an expensive cloth on a $7 spray. This isn't brand loyalty. It's math.
I'm the operations administrator for a regional billiard service company. I manage all cleaning supplies and cloth orders—roughly $40,000 annually across 6 vendors. I report to both operations and finance.
Actually, I didn't start with Simonis. In 2021, our shop used whatever the previous buyer had ordered. Some of it was fine. Some of it wasn't. We had no standard, no records, and no way to know which cleaner caused dull patches on two tables. That's when I started treating maintenance supplies like the capital equipment they protect.
The price on the bottle isn't the price you pay
When I took over purchasing in 2021, I compared cleaners the same way I compared office paper: cost per unit. That was a mistake. A cleaner is not paper. It's a maintenance product for a precision surface.
Simonis X1 costs more per bottle. But the relevant number is cost per cleaned table. We track every table service job in a simple spreadsheet. In 2022, we tested three lower-priced alternatives. The cheap products went on sale, and to be fair, the initial cleanup looked fine. The second and third visits told a different story: residue built up, the cloth grabbed the ball, and we had to re-clean tables before they were ready. That added labor, not just product cost.
I assumed any cleaner marketed for pool tables would be safe. Didn't verify. Turned out 'safe' can mean a lot of different things. The cloth didn't rip or tear—it just started grabbing. That's worse because it's subtle. By the time we caught it, the table needed refelting.
What 'cheap' really means
We didn't have a formal approval process for maintenance products. That's on me. The third time a cleaner left residue (this was back in 2022), I finally created a verification checklist. Now every product has to pass three checks:
- No residue after dry.
- No color change on a cloth sample.
- Cost per table, not cost per gallon.
That checklist would have saved us one refelting job and a very awkward call to a client.
Some buyers think cloth and cleaner are separate categories. They're not. A table's playing speed is about the cloth. A cloth cleaned with the wrong product can play slower, roll differently, and show dirt faster. The customer doesn't blame the cleaner. They blame the table. And the table has your company name on it.
Color and consistency are maintenance issues
Simonis makes this easy because their line is focused. If a table has Simonis 860 Tournament Blue, you don't need a cleaner that claims to do everything. You need one that doesn't dull a specific color. The same goes for Simonis 760 cloth—it's a faster playing cloth with a tighter weave. A heavy residue changes how the balls roll. That's not a cosmetic detail.
Color is not cosmetic. Tournament Blue is a defined color, not just 'blue.' According to Pantone Color Matching System guidelines (pantone.com), brand-critical colors should be within Delta E less than 2. That's an extremely small difference. A cheap cleaner that leaves a film can shift how a color looks under lights. That matters when a customer paid for a professional table and expects it to look right.
The trust issue
I've learned to ask what's NOT included before I ask the price. That applies to maintenance products too. The real cost includes application, re-cleaning, cloth life, and consistency. Simonis isn't the cheapest. It also isn't playing games with a low sticker price and a hidden maintenance cost. That's the kind of vendor I want to deal with.
In our 2024 vendor consolidation project, I cut our supplier list from 8 vendors to 4. Simonis was one of the easy choices. Not because the price was the lowest, but because the quote matched the invoice, the product matched the spec, and there were no surprises.
Some vendors sell a bottle for $6 and let you discover what happens to the cloth on your own. I prefer a product where the total cost is predictable. If that means paying more per bottle, I'll take it.
But isn't cheap cleaner fine?
I can hear the pushback: 'I've been using a cheap cleaner for years and my cloth is fine.' Maybe. But fine isn't the same as right. The cloth life might be shorter by six months, and you'd never know unless you kept records. We keep records. The numbers moved after we switched.
To be clear, I do not mean every cheaper product is garbage. I mean the decision lower price per bottle = lower cost is where buyers get tricked. That's the whole point.
What I'd do differently
After five years of managing these relationships, I'd tell myself one thing: verify before you standardize. Ask how a cleaner behaves after ten applications, not just one. Ask whether the company that makes the cloth also has a maintenance recommendation. And write everything down (mental note: I should have done this in 2021). If a vendor won't tell you what's in the bottle, that's an answer too.
I'll say it plainly: I'd rather buy Simonis X1 pool table cleaner and know exactly what I'm getting than save $12 on a mystery bottle that costs me a table. That's not a brand attitude. It's a purchasing decision. When the invoice is the only thing that's predictable, you're buying more than cleaner. You're buying a surface you don't have to explain to a customer.