What I do is select wood (or any material) from the mill, I bring it home and select from that board the best parts. For instance, a board of feather crotch walnut will not have all feather crotch in it. Customarily the figure will be a small persentage of the whole board. I map out the board to get the most yield of high figure from the board. The high figure may run diagonally through the board. After you get the good stuff from the board the rest may not have much value. It's very hard to sell straight grain wood. Now, you have to absorb the price of the whole board into the price of the blocks you did get.
To do handle materials in any quantity you need better stuff, a bigger band saw, a good one, a bigger shop, dust collection, if you have employees you got to pay them, you need insurance. It takes time to do everything it takes to make quality scales. Somebody has to pay for all those things, and still be competitive.
The reason I don't have any wood on my web site is because I live in Alaska, it costs me more to get wood up here, I can't cut wood up here and sell it at a competitive price down in the lower 48. I would be a fool to try and compete with handle dealers down there. I do provide lots of nice woods to my customers that come into my store.
I have paid 100.00 or more for nice handle pieces (wood) for my own knives at knife shows. If I see a nice piece of wood I either buy it or I walk away from it if I think I can do better elsewhere, but I don't complain about it.
It's fine if people want want to make knives with flooring lumber but thats not what handle material dealers are selling. We're selling highly figured curly and birdseye maple. You seldom see curly and birdseye at a flooring place and you seldom see handle dealers selling straight grain maple for $50.00 a set. We're mixing apples and oranges here.