Often, the only reason you wouldn't choose, say, stainless steel over regular steel, or UV-resistant polycarbonate over ordinary polycarbonate, is because of the expectation that one is cheaper. So price can't be so unimportant. And one version always is cheaper, sometimes by a factor of five or ten times. But sometimes there are surprises and the stainless version is cheaper for other reasons. Maybe the non-stainless bars of that particular size are only available with super tight tolerances, for example.

So why force the customer to know and guess which material grade they want as a proxy for price, when you can directly let them find the selection that meets their needs at the lowest price?

As a business user, I’d like the price filter too. For instance, I might be okay with any material for a valve in a prototyping application as long as it’s the right size, I just need to find the cheapest one (with one day shipping of course!)

I’ve yet to work in a business that doesn’t care about the price of something. This is particularly true when we are evaluating parts that might be used in production at scale.

For what it's worth, I work in industrial controls. More or less all of the machines we design are one-offs so engineering and labor time dominates the cost of projects vs. materials.

Additionally, unplanned downtime is extremely expensive. If a machine breaks down and a replacement part isn't on the shelf, getting that part fast is much more important than saving a few dollars. Same goes for if we end up with a bunch of guys waiting around for a part to get installed.