Speaking of Ah-ha moments, I had one the other day. I was finishing up a new set of 6 large boards with 3/16” holes that I fast-tracked (completed them in two weeks), and I was fitting the Miller Wooden Dowel Pegs to the holes since the Miller pegs are a touch too big at the bottom and it suddenly dawned on me, that as much as I like Miller Dowel Pegs for joinery construction and “dot” inlay work, I think they look a little out of place on my boards. Plus, being wood, if they break, in the hole…well you know where I’m going with this.
Much to my surprise, not a lot of people sell decent looking, affordable 3/16” Metal Pegs…1/8” pegs come in an amazing variety of shapes/colors/sizes…but not so much for the metal 3/16” pegs. I contacted an Ebay seller who had a good assortment of the 3/16” metal pegs and asked about doing a large order. Also, I could only find one vendor who sells a 3/16” board. I believe the models are Drueke Walnut Board (DRK80800) – http://www.puzzlemethis.com/cgi-bin/puzzle/drk81400.html or the 2 track or Drueke Cribbage Master 3 Track (DRK81500) - http://www.puzzlemethis.com/cgi-bin/puzzle/DRK81500.html
I’m getting really close to selling out 5 different series at the moment. Only 1 board left in each series. It will be good to close out some these series. As always, the lower cost board series sell out faster.
I think I’ve pretty much given up on the concept of “Free Shipping”. My unconfirmed sense of “Free Shipping” is that people don’t trust “Free Shipping” unless it’s from an established outfit like Walmart or BestBuy. I’ll probably continue to sell the more expensive boards with “Free Shipping” since that seems to “fit” the pricing model, but I think I will stick with charging a reasonable amount to cover shipping for the other boards.
And speaking of shipping, imagine my surprise when I decided to be a little more careful about shipping and weighing and realizing that taping 2 USPS Priority Mail Shoe box priority mail shoe box size boxes together, added almost a pound (13 ounces), to the weight! Eeek! No wonder the post office gives boxes away for free. They add A LOT of weight to the package!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Selling Out, International Shipping Woes and a Schwag Alert
Selling Out
About a year ago or so, I got a great deal on about a dozen pieces PolyCarbonate Plastic (the bulletproof plastic). Since these pieces were long (24 inches), I've been using the Polycarbonate plastic for the bigger, longer crib board templates. Alas...I'm almost out of this material and soon I will have to mark certain templates "Sold Out" till I can procure some more. I could pay the retail price of $16.00 sq. foot for this type of plastic, but then I would have tack that cost onto the price of the templates, which defeats the purpose of offering reasonably priced drill templates.
International Shipping Woes
I thought I'd give stamps.com a try (even though it's $16.00/month, first month was free), since, unlike Paypal, I could print International First Class labels and NOT have to go the Post Office. Well, the one piece of International First Class postage I printed with stamps.com was for a couple of templates that I shipped to Nova Scotia, Canada, and were subsequently lost in the mail. Of the hundreds of packages I've shipped over the last 3 years, this is the only time anything I've ever shipped got lost in the mail. Not only am I out the cost of the original postage, I have to re-send another set of templates and this time send them International Priority Mail, since International First Class offers zilch in the way of Package Tracking! So I have to pay for shipping a 2nd time and I'm also out the cost of a 2nd set of templates. Naturally stamps.com DOES NOT make it easy to cancel your membership nor will they reimburse the cost of postage for lost packages. And I have to call some ubiquitous 1-800-number in order to cancel the membership. Also, stamps.com doesn't take Paypal, and anytime you want to add postage to your account, you have to do it in $10.00 increments. Suffice it to say that stamps.com SUCKS!!! Paypal is so much easier! You only pay for what you need and it auto-generates the labels for you. You don't have to re-enter the shipping information like you do for stamps.com. And as far as it not offering International First Class shipping...I've decided that International Carrier Pigeon would probably be more reliable than International First Class shipping. I mean what's the point of shipping something to another country via International First Class if you have absolutely no way of knowing if and when it ever got there ? You might as well take the package, stuff if in a bottle and throw out to sea in the general direction of the country you're trying to ship it to. It will probably get there and get there faster than if you had shipped International First Class!
Schwag Alert
Every time I hit a milestone number in either templates or boards, the person who happened to hit the milestone number gets some free "Schwag". I'm rapidly approaching the 200th template to be sold - and the 200th cribbage board to be sold isn't too far off either. The purchaser of the 200th crib board gets a lot more "schwag" than the the person who purchases the 200th template.
Cribbage Board & Template Pricing
I find it interesting (and somewhat telling), that selling Crib Board templates seems to be a more successful endeavor than selling crib boards. A lot of time and effort goes into making crib boards, because there are so many steps (approximately 19 steps). Templates involve just a few steps. Choose a piece of plastic, cut to size, drill the holes and glaze (clean up) the plastic.
That said, the template prices seem to be about right. They sell consistently. I've raised the prices of some of the higher end crib boards, to better reflect the amount of work that goes into the board. Crib boards do not sell steadily and I suspect that sales will be slow this Holiday Season - in part as a result of the higher prices. Given the choice between paying $20 or a $100 for a crib board, most people would choose to pay $20. I'm back to giving free shipping on new crib boards. I'm still charging shipping on older crib boards (on the web site). Older boards on etsy.com come with free shipping.
At the end of the day, I just go with my gut feeling when it comes to pricing crib boards - what seems about right to me, since I know how many hours I spent on any given board. I have no shortage of ideas and material for crib boards and could easily make another couple of hundred unique and one of a kind boards - but I have to balance that against what I'm actually selling.
About a year ago or so, I got a great deal on about a dozen pieces PolyCarbonate Plastic (the bulletproof plastic). Since these pieces were long (24 inches), I've been using the Polycarbonate plastic for the bigger, longer crib board templates. Alas...I'm almost out of this material and soon I will have to mark certain templates "Sold Out" till I can procure some more. I could pay the retail price of $16.00 sq. foot for this type of plastic, but then I would have tack that cost onto the price of the templates, which defeats the purpose of offering reasonably priced drill templates.
International Shipping Woes
I thought I'd give stamps.com a try (even though it's $16.00/month, first month was free), since, unlike Paypal, I could print International First Class labels and NOT have to go the Post Office. Well, the one piece of International First Class postage I printed with stamps.com was for a couple of templates that I shipped to Nova Scotia, Canada, and were subsequently lost in the mail. Of the hundreds of packages I've shipped over the last 3 years, this is the only time anything I've ever shipped got lost in the mail. Not only am I out the cost of the original postage, I have to re-send another set of templates and this time send them International Priority Mail, since International First Class offers zilch in the way of Package Tracking! So I have to pay for shipping a 2nd time and I'm also out the cost of a 2nd set of templates. Naturally stamps.com DOES NOT make it easy to cancel your membership nor will they reimburse the cost of postage for lost packages. And I have to call some ubiquitous 1-800-number in order to cancel the membership. Also, stamps.com doesn't take Paypal, and anytime you want to add postage to your account, you have to do it in $10.00 increments. Suffice it to say that stamps.com SUCKS!!! Paypal is so much easier! You only pay for what you need and it auto-generates the labels for you. You don't have to re-enter the shipping information like you do for stamps.com. And as far as it not offering International First Class shipping...I've decided that International Carrier Pigeon would probably be more reliable than International First Class shipping. I mean what's the point of shipping something to another country via International First Class if you have absolutely no way of knowing if and when it ever got there ? You might as well take the package, stuff if in a bottle and throw out to sea in the general direction of the country you're trying to ship it to. It will probably get there and get there faster than if you had shipped International First Class!
Schwag Alert
Every time I hit a milestone number in either templates or boards, the person who happened to hit the milestone number gets some free "Schwag". I'm rapidly approaching the 200th template to be sold - and the 200th cribbage board to be sold isn't too far off either. The purchaser of the 200th crib board gets a lot more "schwag" than the the person who purchases the 200th template.
Cribbage Board & Template Pricing
I find it interesting (and somewhat telling), that selling Crib Board templates seems to be a more successful endeavor than selling crib boards. A lot of time and effort goes into making crib boards, because there are so many steps (approximately 19 steps). Templates involve just a few steps. Choose a piece of plastic, cut to size, drill the holes and glaze (clean up) the plastic.
That said, the template prices seem to be about right. They sell consistently. I've raised the prices of some of the higher end crib boards, to better reflect the amount of work that goes into the board. Crib boards do not sell steadily and I suspect that sales will be slow this Holiday Season - in part as a result of the higher prices. Given the choice between paying $20 or a $100 for a crib board, most people would choose to pay $20. I'm back to giving free shipping on new crib boards. I'm still charging shipping on older crib boards (on the web site). Older boards on etsy.com come with free shipping.
At the end of the day, I just go with my gut feeling when it comes to pricing crib boards - what seems about right to me, since I know how many hours I spent on any given board. I have no shortage of ideas and material for crib boards and could easily make another couple of hundred unique and one of a kind boards - but I have to balance that against what I'm actually selling.
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