My wife keeps horses at a nearby retirement Community. And near where the horses live, this Retirement Community has a large and pretty active dumpster facility. It's not uncommon for someone who has passed this world and unto the next to have all their worldly goods taken up to the dumpsters and "dumped". It makes for some interesting treasure hunting for the locals.
My wife casually mentioned the other day that someone had thrown away a leather chair - covered in Zebra Leather. I didn't give it much thought until I went over there to help out with some maintenance chores for the horses and I saw the chair. The Zebra leather was in pretty decent shape.
I'd previously made a couple of boards with palm leave pieces, so I thought I'd give the Zebra leather a try. I was able to salvage quite a few good pieces - but like most of the boards I make, the material itself (and not me) will determine what type of board, it's size, etc.
I wouldn't normally make a board out of animal hide, but there is a lot precedence for making crib boards out of animal type material (ivory tusks, deer antlers and moose antlers - to name a few), so it's not all that far fetched. The hide fits my general criteria of being unusual or interesting, so it seemed like a good fit. On a at least of a few of the boards, I will mix the Zebra Hide face with some Zebrawood.
I would never have gone out and actively looked to make a board out of an animal hide - but since this re-purposing the hide (it would have gone to the landfill), I was OK with it.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Post Holiday Wrap Up and New Templates
I actually sold boards on and after Christmas
Admittedly, the cribbage board business can be somewhat seasonal since the majority of them are given as gifts. Given that etsy is now a strong selling avenue for me, I pretty much expected not to see another cribbage board sale until next November, so I was bit surprised I’ve actually sold a few boards since Christmas. In fact, I sold a board on Christmas day.
Templates
Now that the holidays have passed, I’m selling templates again with one notable exception: I added a disclaimer letting people know I don’t have and I don’t use CAD machinery to drill my templates. My goal has always been to sell reasonably good looking templates with out the holes wandering all over the place.
I got the idea of making really small templates, what I will call micro-templates. I cruised around the web looking for ideas of how to squeeze a 120 point continuous track format into a very small area – say 5” x 5”. I found some interesting wrap around type drill patterns (from other crib board vendors) which I shrank down by about half to fit the micro-template paradigm.
I also came up with a bunch of new designs in the geometric section: trapezoid, Compact Ovals, Heart, star, race-track, and rectangle/triangle/square with tapered corners.
I’m also adding what I call SCT templates (Spiral Cascading Turns), where the number of turns equals the number of streets.
With all the new template designs, I up to 55 template designs – the trick now is to get caught up and drill them all. So I’d be increasing my current template count from 30 templates to 55+ templates.
In addition to the little freebies I include with the plastic templates I sell, I’m now throwing in a paper template (3 person continuous track) loosely based on the paper template Lee Valley sells on their website. You tack the template to the board material, us an awl to mark the hole center and then come back and drill the hole. I include 2 copies of the template – one to use and one to share.
Admittedly, the cribbage board business can be somewhat seasonal since the majority of them are given as gifts. Given that etsy is now a strong selling avenue for me, I pretty much expected not to see another cribbage board sale until next November, so I was bit surprised I’ve actually sold a few boards since Christmas. In fact, I sold a board on Christmas day.
Templates
Now that the holidays have passed, I’m selling templates again with one notable exception: I added a disclaimer letting people know I don’t have and I don’t use CAD machinery to drill my templates. My goal has always been to sell reasonably good looking templates with out the holes wandering all over the place.
I got the idea of making really small templates, what I will call micro-templates. I cruised around the web looking for ideas of how to squeeze a 120 point continuous track format into a very small area – say 5” x 5”. I found some interesting wrap around type drill patterns (from other crib board vendors) which I shrank down by about half to fit the micro-template paradigm.
I also came up with a bunch of new designs in the geometric section: trapezoid, Compact Ovals, Heart, star, race-track, and rectangle/triangle/square with tapered corners.
I’m also adding what I call SCT templates (Spiral Cascading Turns), where the number of turns equals the number of streets.
With all the new template designs, I up to 55 template designs – the trick now is to get caught up and drill them all. So I’d be increasing my current template count from 30 templates to 55+ templates.
In addition to the little freebies I include with the plastic templates I sell, I’m now throwing in a paper template (3 person continuous track) loosely based on the paper template Lee Valley sells on their website. You tack the template to the board material, us an awl to mark the hole center and then come back and drill the hole. I include 2 copies of the template – one to use and one to share.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Enumero State of the Union 2009
Since it’s nearing the end of the year and not likely I will sell any more boards between now and Jan 1st, I’ll jump ahead a little bit and give my EnumeroCribbageboards.com State of the Union, for 2009.
Money vs. the Cribbage Board
If a board sells at a given price, then that’s probably a fair selling price. Admittedly, I did some price fishing this year – trying to find out the right prices for a given board. I marked a few boards a little high than I would normally and then dropped the prices till they sold, thus establishing a fair selling price. Etsy.com was a huge help in that regard – since if a board sells on etsy.com, then it seems to be fairly representative of its market value, given that etsy.com is kind of a perfect place to figure out a proper selling price, albeit it’s a little trial and error. Setting a price for a board is something I’ve struggled with – until this year.
I sell boards that are distinctive and unique in their appearance and construction. My boards include solid stable wood cores (prevents warping), double edge borders, inlay galore, custom hardwood threaded caps for the peg storage compartments and are typically use made from 5 to 8 different species of woods and 8 to 29 distinct pieces of wood. And I don’t charge and an arm and a leg either.
Going…going…gone green
I think it’s fair to say that my cribbage boards are fairly “green” in the way I make them. I use recycled substrate material (the wood that makes up the core or center of the board), whenever possible. For smaller boards, this is typically cabinet grade plywood and for the larger boards, it can be recycled maple cutting board or the table top from a solid white oak table. It’s actually quite astonishing (even to me) how little wood I need to make a very nice looking board. The power to generate my power tools is provided (in part) from a large 19 panel array of Solar Photovoltaic (energy producing) panels on our roof. The shavings from planning the wood for the boards either ends up the garden or in the back of my wife’s horse trailer. I collect most of the sawdust generated and it goes into the Compost Tumbler. My glue spreaders are small left-over rectangular wood pieces. The card board boxes I use to ship the boards are either recycled (saved from the landfill at my regular paying job) or provided to me (at no cost) via the USPS who makes their shipping boxes from Post Consumer Waste. I rarely ever make one board at a time. There are always made in small batches. When I finish the boards, I typically try and do them about 10 or 12 at a time. This cuts down on waste as well. I light my shop with Compact Fluorescent bulbs. And for fresh air, a nice cross breeze and natural light, I simply open the garage door.
The sand paper wrap on my big drum sander is used over and over again – I “clean” it with what is essentially a giant eraser. I do this until there is basically no “grit” left on the sandpaper wrap.
Going forward, any board made with a least one piece of recycled material, will have a stamp on the bottom of the board. The presence of the stamp will indicate some piece(s) that make up the board came from some kind of recycled or re-purposed material.
Etsy.com is “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade ™ ” Part I
I mentioned etsy.com earlier. If you go to etsy.com and search for things made of wood (under woodworking) you will come back with about 1600 pages. Since each pages hold 20+ items, that’s about 32,000 items just under the woodworking section. Such a large and vast selection is great if you’re a consumer. Competition, especially in the world of hand-crafted items really makes for good buys! You can get amazing prices on some very, very beautiful, handcrafted items. etsy.com has, dare I say it, has become successful for both the consumer and seller and etsy.com is still WAY cheaper than ebay.com for sellers, which still gets about 20% of the item’s final selling price (when listed with auction style), when you factor in listing fees, final valuation fees and Paypal’s fees.
Getting Through Customs and Random Thoughts About Wood
I did 2 custom board requests this year. The 2nd custom board request included Ipe (aka ironwood, or as I like to call it, “Concrete in wood form”. After finishing the boards, I was reminded that Ipe is actually quite nice to work with and finishes nicely as well. Of the dozen or so wood species I routinely work with, Ipe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipe ) is a very consistent wood. The only downside is that it’s dust is pretty toxic and it’s splinter are razor sharp. Purpleheart/Paduak/Ebony can be brittle and a little finicky, but always finish well and really make the boards “pop”. Cherry is seductive in its color and grain and really is “God’s Gift to Cabinetmakers”. Mahogany always forgives but can be a little inconsistent in its grain patterns. Walnut varies from dark brown to creamy white, but its grain and appearance are always warm and inviting. Maple puts up very little fuss and seems to want to please. Poplar is like working with an old friend who knows all of your bad habits and quirks and never, ever judges. It just works. Striped Canary wood is just plain beautiful and very, very sexy. Zebra wood can be a little disappointing, but still a very pretty and interesting wood. Incense cedar is a bit brittle, but smells great and is quite beautiful and always finishes nicely. Pine/Fir, is just good old predictable pine, tried and true. And finally, Cocobolo is like a secret, exotic mistress. Expensive, dangerous, fussy as hell, and worth every penny. Just remember to take a shower after working with it! The dust always gives me the itchies!
Pegging Along…
I stopped using Miller pegs for the 3/16” hole cribbage boards. I found a very nice vendor on ebay.com who sells 3/16” polished metal pegs and so I bought a bunch of the 3/16” pegs (about 20-25 boards worth). I really like using metal pegs whenever possible. They contrast nicely with wood and more importantly, they won’t break off and create one of those “forever-plugged” holes in your cribbage board.
Alignment is Important
Believe or not, I actually worry about peg hole alignment. A lot. I was reminded of this fact when going through some of my dad’s personal possessions after he passed away this last summer. I found an older Drueke Cribbage board (in its original box). I opened the box and to my astonishment, I saw the hole alignment on this board wandered all over the place. It obviously had not been drilled with any kind of drill template. The holes were just too far off. It’s surprisingly difficult to free hand drill in a straight line. It can be done, but it’s not that easy. And if you think about it, holes have to align straight to adjacent holes on either side (say for example in 3 player board) and straight to holes in its own street. Then the grouping of the holes has to align with other groupings, in both the X and Y direction. And lets not forget the turns and making sure the holes the curve, whether 180 degrees or 90 degrees or 45 degrees, line up correctly. See, I told you I worry a lot about peg hole alignment.
ACC Tournament Style Boards
Earlier this year I got a chance to see what type of board is used by serious Peggers at Grass Roots Games and at ACC Tournaments. It was a thin board (about 2” wide) and about 19” long and had directional arrows that indicated the turn since these were continuous track boards. I even figured out how to ink “turn arrows” onto the boards. These boards were sold via the ACC newsletter for years by a gentleman named Roy Boyles. As I understand it, Roy stopped selling the boards.
I made a template from Roy’s board and then returned the board, the template etc. back to the board’s owner. The board’s owner (a friend of Roy Boyles) had made a custom request for the template. I of course made several templates for myself. I ended up making 3 different templates in the vein of the ACC tournament style board. A long and short version of with 1/8” holes and then a long version with 9/64” holes.
Since I have a lot of odd and end pieces of beech flooring around, I will go ahead and try something new in the new year and make some ACC Tournament style boards with the beech flooring. Simple, clean little boards either with 1/8” or 9/64” holes. And since there is now a Lumber Liquidator’s near my house, I may pop over there and see if they have any scrap pieces they want to sell for cheap.
Some Words about Drill Templates…
I stopped selling templates in early November. My inbox, which used to be all ablaze with template orders, has cooled considerably. For the most part, I’m kind of glad to take a break from doing templates. Templates grew a head of it’s own and quickly took over – consuming what little free shop time I have. I honesty think cribbage drill templates is one of those few areas (for selling stuff on the Internet) that has not been properly exploited, even by Amazon.com.
To Finish Up…
I like consistency and predictability when it comes to finishing boards. Most woodworkers will tell you that finishing is something they struggle with. I am no exception. My finishing technique(s) over the last year are a step closer to where I would like them to be. I’m more consistent and the results are more predictable. Both are good things since the finish is the finish.
And the final count was…
As of this writing, I have I sold out 9 series in 2009, and 49 boards. Less than 2008, but my hit counts started going up – possibly because I started to get a high ranking in the search engines? Both of the custom board requests I did this year were from people who saw the boards on etsy.com. So averaging the last 3 years, it’s safe to say that I sell about 50 boards a year.
etsy.com Part II
esty.com is a good place to sell crib boards since there are boards from different vendors to compare to one other right there in the same location, on the same web page and it’s this comparison shopping that I think people enjoy.
People coming to etsy.com expect to find hand made cribbage boards that are perhaps different looking and are made with different materials than commercially available boards. Whereas the typical visitor at my website, is generally referred there one of two ways – either by a search engine (google makes most of the referrals) or by the ACC Website (www.cribbage.org/links) and the Cribbage Corner website ( http://cribbagecorner.com/cribbage-boards ).
Fake 200th Board, Real 200th Board and the 300th Board Sold
I probably jumped the gun a little bit, awarding the 200th board sold schwag to the 188th cribbage board sold (I was counting chess boards in the overall board count). So…to alleviate my guilt, I gave some schwag to the buyer of the 200th Cribbage board (212th board overall). This person also happened to make the largest single purchase of Crib Boards to date (4 boards in one order). So…it felt like the right thing to do. Going forward, I think I will keep the board counts separate. So when I roll around to the 300th board sold (tentatively scheduled for the Holiday Season 2011 if past sales are any indication of future sales – averaging 50 boards per year sold over the last 4 years or so), it will be the actual 300th cribbage board sold and the number “300” engraved on the wood cap would confirm this.
My first paid Advertising Link
Quite out of the blue, a gentleman asked to advertise on the home page with a small text link to an online gambling site. Cribbage is often played for money (in England it’s one of the few games allowed by Statute to be played for small stakes), so I said why not?
Ironically, the very question of whether cribbage is gambling is not (similar in some interpretations to lotteries) is addressed here:
http://home.mountaincable.net/~halscrib/cutlucky.htm
Money vs. the Cribbage Board
If a board sells at a given price, then that’s probably a fair selling price. Admittedly, I did some price fishing this year – trying to find out the right prices for a given board. I marked a few boards a little high than I would normally and then dropped the prices till they sold, thus establishing a fair selling price. Etsy.com was a huge help in that regard – since if a board sells on etsy.com, then it seems to be fairly representative of its market value, given that etsy.com is kind of a perfect place to figure out a proper selling price, albeit it’s a little trial and error. Setting a price for a board is something I’ve struggled with – until this year.
I sell boards that are distinctive and unique in their appearance and construction. My boards include solid stable wood cores (prevents warping), double edge borders, inlay galore, custom hardwood threaded caps for the peg storage compartments and are typically use made from 5 to 8 different species of woods and 8 to 29 distinct pieces of wood. And I don’t charge and an arm and a leg either.
Going…going…gone green
I think it’s fair to say that my cribbage boards are fairly “green” in the way I make them. I use recycled substrate material (the wood that makes up the core or center of the board), whenever possible. For smaller boards, this is typically cabinet grade plywood and for the larger boards, it can be recycled maple cutting board or the table top from a solid white oak table. It’s actually quite astonishing (even to me) how little wood I need to make a very nice looking board. The power to generate my power tools is provided (in part) from a large 19 panel array of Solar Photovoltaic (energy producing) panels on our roof. The shavings from planning the wood for the boards either ends up the garden or in the back of my wife’s horse trailer. I collect most of the sawdust generated and it goes into the Compost Tumbler. My glue spreaders are small left-over rectangular wood pieces. The card board boxes I use to ship the boards are either recycled (saved from the landfill at my regular paying job) or provided to me (at no cost) via the USPS who makes their shipping boxes from Post Consumer Waste. I rarely ever make one board at a time. There are always made in small batches. When I finish the boards, I typically try and do them about 10 or 12 at a time. This cuts down on waste as well. I light my shop with Compact Fluorescent bulbs. And for fresh air, a nice cross breeze and natural light, I simply open the garage door.
The sand paper wrap on my big drum sander is used over and over again – I “clean” it with what is essentially a giant eraser. I do this until there is basically no “grit” left on the sandpaper wrap.
Going forward, any board made with a least one piece of recycled material, will have a stamp on the bottom of the board. The presence of the stamp will indicate some piece(s) that make up the board came from some kind of recycled or re-purposed material.
Etsy.com is “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade ™ ” Part I
I mentioned etsy.com earlier. If you go to etsy.com and search for things made of wood (under woodworking) you will come back with about 1600 pages. Since each pages hold 20+ items, that’s about 32,000 items just under the woodworking section. Such a large and vast selection is great if you’re a consumer. Competition, especially in the world of hand-crafted items really makes for good buys! You can get amazing prices on some very, very beautiful, handcrafted items. etsy.com has, dare I say it, has become successful for both the consumer and seller and etsy.com is still WAY cheaper than ebay.com for sellers, which still gets about 20% of the item’s final selling price (when listed with auction style), when you factor in listing fees, final valuation fees and Paypal’s fees.
Getting Through Customs and Random Thoughts About Wood
I did 2 custom board requests this year. The 2nd custom board request included Ipe (aka ironwood, or as I like to call it, “Concrete in wood form”. After finishing the boards, I was reminded that Ipe is actually quite nice to work with and finishes nicely as well. Of the dozen or so wood species I routinely work with, Ipe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipe ) is a very consistent wood. The only downside is that it’s dust is pretty toxic and it’s splinter are razor sharp. Purpleheart/Paduak/Ebony can be brittle and a little finicky, but always finish well and really make the boards “pop”. Cherry is seductive in its color and grain and really is “God’s Gift to Cabinetmakers”. Mahogany always forgives but can be a little inconsistent in its grain patterns. Walnut varies from dark brown to creamy white, but its grain and appearance are always warm and inviting. Maple puts up very little fuss and seems to want to please. Poplar is like working with an old friend who knows all of your bad habits and quirks and never, ever judges. It just works. Striped Canary wood is just plain beautiful and very, very sexy. Zebra wood can be a little disappointing, but still a very pretty and interesting wood. Incense cedar is a bit brittle, but smells great and is quite beautiful and always finishes nicely. Pine/Fir, is just good old predictable pine, tried and true. And finally, Cocobolo is like a secret, exotic mistress. Expensive, dangerous, fussy as hell, and worth every penny. Just remember to take a shower after working with it! The dust always gives me the itchies!
Pegging Along…
I stopped using Miller pegs for the 3/16” hole cribbage boards. I found a very nice vendor on ebay.com who sells 3/16” polished metal pegs and so I bought a bunch of the 3/16” pegs (about 20-25 boards worth). I really like using metal pegs whenever possible. They contrast nicely with wood and more importantly, they won’t break off and create one of those “forever-plugged” holes in your cribbage board.
Alignment is Important
Believe or not, I actually worry about peg hole alignment. A lot. I was reminded of this fact when going through some of my dad’s personal possessions after he passed away this last summer. I found an older Drueke Cribbage board (in its original box). I opened the box and to my astonishment, I saw the hole alignment on this board wandered all over the place. It obviously had not been drilled with any kind of drill template. The holes were just too far off. It’s surprisingly difficult to free hand drill in a straight line. It can be done, but it’s not that easy. And if you think about it, holes have to align straight to adjacent holes on either side (say for example in 3 player board) and straight to holes in its own street. Then the grouping of the holes has to align with other groupings, in both the X and Y direction. And lets not forget the turns and making sure the holes the curve, whether 180 degrees or 90 degrees or 45 degrees, line up correctly. See, I told you I worry a lot about peg hole alignment.
ACC Tournament Style Boards
Earlier this year I got a chance to see what type of board is used by serious Peggers at Grass Roots Games and at ACC Tournaments. It was a thin board (about 2” wide) and about 19” long and had directional arrows that indicated the turn since these were continuous track boards. I even figured out how to ink “turn arrows” onto the boards. These boards were sold via the ACC newsletter for years by a gentleman named Roy Boyles. As I understand it, Roy stopped selling the boards.
I made a template from Roy’s board and then returned the board, the template etc. back to the board’s owner. The board’s owner (a friend of Roy Boyles) had made a custom request for the template. I of course made several templates for myself. I ended up making 3 different templates in the vein of the ACC tournament style board. A long and short version of with 1/8” holes and then a long version with 9/64” holes.
Since I have a lot of odd and end pieces of beech flooring around, I will go ahead and try something new in the new year and make some ACC Tournament style boards with the beech flooring. Simple, clean little boards either with 1/8” or 9/64” holes. And since there is now a Lumber Liquidator’s near my house, I may pop over there and see if they have any scrap pieces they want to sell for cheap.
Some Words about Drill Templates…
I stopped selling templates in early November. My inbox, which used to be all ablaze with template orders, has cooled considerably. For the most part, I’m kind of glad to take a break from doing templates. Templates grew a head of it’s own and quickly took over – consuming what little free shop time I have. I honesty think cribbage drill templates is one of those few areas (for selling stuff on the Internet) that has not been properly exploited, even by Amazon.com.
To Finish Up…
I like consistency and predictability when it comes to finishing boards. Most woodworkers will tell you that finishing is something they struggle with. I am no exception. My finishing technique(s) over the last year are a step closer to where I would like them to be. I’m more consistent and the results are more predictable. Both are good things since the finish is the finish.
And the final count was…
As of this writing, I have I sold out 9 series in 2009, and 49 boards. Less than 2008, but my hit counts started going up – possibly because I started to get a high ranking in the search engines? Both of the custom board requests I did this year were from people who saw the boards on etsy.com. So averaging the last 3 years, it’s safe to say that I sell about 50 boards a year.
etsy.com Part II
esty.com is a good place to sell crib boards since there are boards from different vendors to compare to one other right there in the same location, on the same web page and it’s this comparison shopping that I think people enjoy.
People coming to etsy.com expect to find hand made cribbage boards that are perhaps different looking and are made with different materials than commercially available boards. Whereas the typical visitor at my website, is generally referred there one of two ways – either by a search engine (google makes most of the referrals) or by the ACC Website (www.cribbage.org/links) and the Cribbage Corner website ( http://cribbagecorner.com/cribbage-boards ).
Fake 200th Board, Real 200th Board and the 300th Board Sold
I probably jumped the gun a little bit, awarding the 200th board sold schwag to the 188th cribbage board sold (I was counting chess boards in the overall board count). So…to alleviate my guilt, I gave some schwag to the buyer of the 200th Cribbage board (212th board overall). This person also happened to make the largest single purchase of Crib Boards to date (4 boards in one order). So…it felt like the right thing to do. Going forward, I think I will keep the board counts separate. So when I roll around to the 300th board sold (tentatively scheduled for the Holiday Season 2011 if past sales are any indication of future sales – averaging 50 boards per year sold over the last 4 years or so), it will be the actual 300th cribbage board sold and the number “300” engraved on the wood cap would confirm this.
My first paid Advertising Link
Quite out of the blue, a gentleman asked to advertise on the home page with a small text link to an online gambling site. Cribbage is often played for money (in England it’s one of the few games allowed by Statute to be played for small stakes), so I said why not?
Ironically, the very question of whether cribbage is gambling is not (similar in some interpretations to lotteries) is addressed here:
http://home.mountaincable.net/~halscrib/cutlucky.htm
Thursday, December 3, 2009
200th Board Sold/Schwag Alert Update
Much to my surprise, the 200th board kind of zoomed by. The 200th board sold on Dec. 2nd and then a couple hours later, the 201st board and the next morning gave way to the 202nd board. Thank-you etsy.com! I woman in Illinois bought the 200th board, “Drytown” in the “Ghost Towns of California – Series III “ group. For her efforts in helping me reach this notable milestone, she receives valuable Enumero Schwag valued at over $5.00. The Schwag includes Enumero Themed stuff: a hat, T-Shirt, Pen, Limited Edition Refrigerator Magnets, key-chain and something that is actually useful, but arguably a little overkill for the “rustic” style board she chose: A set of 6 jeweled Austrian Style Cribbage Pegs. Every 100th board receives a set. So start counting now for Number 300!
And then there were none
I think the series, “The Committee of 5” set some kind of personal best in how quickly it sold out. A mere 10 days after the series was issued, it was sold out. The series started as a custom board request based on another board in the series, “Fictional Elements of the Universe.” Essentially, the requestor liked the maple face (stained red) with Ipe/cherry border and purpleheart & ebony point separators from a board in that series. The requestor ended up buying 2 of the 5 boards. The other 3 boards sold on etsy.com.
From this, I can draw several conclusions. People prefer 3 player boards. I already knew this, but it’s nice to have confirmation of it. I will of course be trending more towards 3 Player boards in the future, since this sells well. This particular design/combination of woods seems to appeal to people. These boards come with the heavier stout pegs, which I think people also like.
Cyber Monday
The infamous Internet shopping day, saw 3 boards sell on the particular day and reasonably high number of visitors. Not quite WalMart selling flat screen TVs for $99 but I’ll take it.
Oh Canada
After deciding not to sell boards to our Cribbage Playing friends to the North, I relinquished and updated all of the shipping rates on etsy.com to include our Cribbage playing friends to the North. International Priority mail is expensive and in some cases, the board costs less than the shipping…hence why it’s better to buy more than one board, if you happen to hail from up that way.
Much to my surprise, the 200th board kind of zoomed by. The 200th board sold on Dec. 2nd and then a couple hours later, the 201st board and the next morning gave way to the 202nd board. Thank-you etsy.com! I woman in Illinois bought the 200th board, “Drytown” in the “Ghost Towns of California – Series III “ group. For her efforts in helping me reach this notable milestone, she receives valuable Enumero Schwag valued at over $5.00. The Schwag includes Enumero Themed stuff: a hat, T-Shirt, Pen, Limited Edition Refrigerator Magnets, key-chain and something that is actually useful, but arguably a little overkill for the “rustic” style board she chose: A set of 6 jeweled Austrian Style Cribbage Pegs. Every 100th board receives a set. So start counting now for Number 300!
And then there were none
I think the series, “The Committee of 5” set some kind of personal best in how quickly it sold out. A mere 10 days after the series was issued, it was sold out. The series started as a custom board request based on another board in the series, “Fictional Elements of the Universe.” Essentially, the requestor liked the maple face (stained red) with Ipe/cherry border and purpleheart & ebony point separators from a board in that series. The requestor ended up buying 2 of the 5 boards. The other 3 boards sold on etsy.com.
From this, I can draw several conclusions. People prefer 3 player boards. I already knew this, but it’s nice to have confirmation of it. I will of course be trending more towards 3 Player boards in the future, since this sells well. This particular design/combination of woods seems to appeal to people. These boards come with the heavier stout pegs, which I think people also like.
Cyber Monday
The infamous Internet shopping day, saw 3 boards sell on the particular day and reasonably high number of visitors. Not quite WalMart selling flat screen TVs for $99 but I’ll take it.
Oh Canada
After deciding not to sell boards to our Cribbage Playing friends to the North, I relinquished and updated all of the shipping rates on etsy.com to include our Cribbage playing friends to the North. International Priority mail is expensive and in some cases, the board costs less than the shipping…hence why it’s better to buy more than one board, if you happen to hail from up that way.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
New 3/16" Pegs Arrived and I couldn't be happier
The New 3/16" Cribbage Pegs Arrived and I couldn't be happier! The colors are a good fit for the boards (black, copper, gold, light and dark silver color) and they fit very nicely. This series is titled "The Six Cardinal Directions" and includes North, South, East, West, Up and Down. Technically up and down aren't cardinal directions, but...I made 6 boards, so I had to make them fit. The substrate for these boards (the board in the middle that the top, sided and bottom is glued to) is made up of solid white oak slats and is hard as nails! I found this out the hard way when I went to drill the peg holder hole. Usually I will drill the hole about half way on the horizontal borer and then finish the rest of the hole with a hand drill. I started to do this - I started the hole on the horizontal borer and then I switched to the hand drill. I started to drill and the hand drill bit seized up because the wood it was drilling into was so DAMN hard. Unfortunately, just because the drill bit suddenly stopped turning, this doesn't mean that the drill will stop along with it. The drill itself kept turning and nearly took my hands off. Ouch! Tapping the hole for the threaded cap was no picnic either! But, in the end, I'm pleased with the way the boards turned out and I think they look especially spiffy with the new metal pegs!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
An Ah-hA Moment, 3/16" Pegs and "Free Shipping" Doesn' t Work
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!
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!
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
