Isen workshop: adventures in batch production (or not...)

likely to forget, dither etc....

This

"...finance available through magic mike."

Do people not realise that Mike is normal sized, and that you're no bigger than a hamster?

Mr Scaffolding Headtube, are you making the assumption that you are normal sized?

God no, being normal would be awful.

I agree with Velocio that Shopify is great. But @Señor_Bear is right too. If your main product is essentially a set deposit and then a variable final amount then the transaction fee that Shopify take will be a margin killer. Shopify overkill unless you start selling 20 other SKUs as well.

I’d recommend using https://craftcms.com/ or something similar and a simple payments/order form with https://stripe.com/gb

Bank transfers set up a barrier and will cause a lot queries that won't convert to actual orders.

Stripe take 1.4% of your transaction (plus 20p). Whatever Shopify tier you choose Shopify take more % as well as a monthly fee.

I react very negatively to being asked to pay via bank transfer - for e.g. Power2Max require this.

I almost bought something else, and each time I bought a new P2m (I think I've bought three now) the bank transfer thing pissed me off.

You want to remove as much friction from the process as possible - make clicking "buy" as easy as it can possibly be.

I only bought the P2M because there was nothing else in the market that matched it - if there had been, and it allowed me to pay "normally" then there's no way P2M would have got my money.

This is the reason why I've never bought anything from cnc-bike.de
I am doing a marketing project at uni at the moment, at it helps drive up sales when you ease consumer access channels.

You want to remove as much friction from the process as possible - make clicking "buy" as easy as it can possibly be.

A fair maxim - but when selling high cost low volume stuff with what will probably be a fairly protracted and somewhat personal sales process you can get away with being a bit clumsy when it comes to taking payment if you'd rather put your own kids through college - as opposed to those of PayPal / Stripe / Shopify etc

Which describes Talbot (clumsy anyway) but Isen is supposed to be my ticket out of this hell hole, Audi rs6's, coke, rolexes etc etc and the more I think about it the more i think it should just be 'buy now' for full value. Anything less and if it was me I would just ask 'why?'

Neil is prime Isen #buyer demographic (although obvs actually not going to buy one) so his opinion is very valid. @amey what do you think, as part of the buyers basket registration comittee?

A PayPal button could give you the deposit taking system in a single click.

If you already have a marketing website to do the rest of the work... all you'd need is a "Leave a deposit to secure yours" page, with a PayPal button.

Bear in mind that such a button immediately gives you all credit cards too... you can sort the final payment later.

This does mean that you have to keep track of delivery addresses, manage risk yourself (most transactions can be charge-backed within 60 days), manage outstanding orders, etc... but again, if you're doing this comfortably with spreadsheets, the advantages of Shopify aren't high.

Shopify's sweet spot is when you have more than 20 orders per month, and each needs to be fully tracked, and you are dealing with different postage options. Then, the costs of using Shopify are really low considering what you're getting.

Isen payments were not as easy as possible. When I had a cash surplus I did not get the invoice for the outstanding amount and I would have been happy to pay the balance a couple of months ago.

I still need to pay the final amount, but it just needs me to move and juggle a few bits of cash or sell my single speed Chris King hubs.

Easier payment makes impulse purchasing easier. Your frames are lovely but not necessary so making the "hmmmm ha shall I buy" route easier will help with this.

I think the key is a trustworthy website, full payment and realistic lead times. Which brings me on to.....

It turns out that building 30 bikes at a time is a real pain in the arse in this workshop. It's also made me realise that I can't really work out how best to do it until we see how many orders we are taking at any one time. I can see building one size at a time as being helpful, but with the fixtures we have it's not a necessity. Once we have painted this batch we are going to start taking orders again, which should coincide with our swanky new website (thanks Holls) and we can then see how quickly the orders stack up.

Neil is prime Isen #buyer demographic (although obvs actually not going to buy one) so his opinion is very valid.

Yeah - but note he actually went ahead and wired the money to P2M :)

If you want something enough and can only get it from one place then you can tolerate the occasional speed bump.

But sure the purchase process should be as easy as it needs to be.

Beware spending energy on solving scale problems when you don't yet have those scale problems. You seemed to sell the first batch super quick - was a lumpy payment process a deal breaker for those guys and / or did it cause operational problems at your end?

Maybe also to note: In Europe (hence the P2M and cnc example) it is still very common to pay by bank transfer. Cash cards (maestro etc.) are a lot more common, with bank transfers or payment of an invoice the only options for buying online. Lots of websites will let you place the order, and send an invoice (electronic or paper) and then will only process your order once the invoice is paid. As a native of the UK living in Switzerland, this all seemed pretty annoying and clunky when I first got here, but now is fairly routine for online purchases.

I guess my point is.... If you're hoping for your market to expand beyond the UK, bank transfers and such like aren't such a big deal.

Yeah - but note he actually went ahead and wired the money to P2M :)

I absolutely would not have done so if there had been an alternative that didn't make me jump through that hoop though - I'd have happily paid more for the convenience of buying from Wiggle via a card, for example.

It probably cost about £500 in staffing costs, as with great invoices come great email chains. The key to selling bikes in a profitable manner is AS FEW EMAILS AS POSSIBLE.

Also, @Dammit did buy it, but as he says only because there was no other option at the time. This meme seems very relevant to this discussion:

But does taking payment immediately put people off I suppose is the question?

I'm not in the market for a frame like this, extremely nice as they are, but I wouldn't have the money up front to be able to pay the lot which would make it unavailable to me. I'd prefer to leave a deposit and have next month's pay day to top it up.
Can you maybe have options for leave a deposit and pay in full? You'd have slighty more work in that you'd have to keep track of those payments, whose paid deposit or in full but that wouldn't be too bad I'd think

I'm not in the market for a frame like this, extremely nice as they are, because I wouldn't have the money up front

FTFY. Paupers are not the target demographic 🙂

Speak for yourself. I could buy 10 frames outright if I so pleased, but I don't touch my savings were possible and I was trying to give another side to the discussion.

People who want to buy your frame are happy to put down a good chunk up front, and would prefer to do so to know it's happening and to mentally commit to it and to let the anticipation and excitement begin.

I tend to throw money first, ask questions later... much prefer the "here's just under half up front" approach as it gets us both committed early.

I also tend to prefer to have a final payment... I've seen that with some providers of custom stuff, that paying everything up front removes incentives to keep things progressing at a decent clip.

My preference is:

• Let me pay in as friction free a way to put down the deposit, make it a meaningful enough amount that you don't have cash flow issues to get started
  
• Let me pay the final amount at collection/delivery time, and let a conversation happen in between for progress updates and whatever options need to happen
  
  

The way a deposit is paid, and the way the final payment is made... these don't have to be the same thing, but it helps if they are.

You could bypass the whole of Shopify/etc... and use Xero, an accounting tool. It has a fixed montly fee for your bookkeeping, and can be joined to PayPal so that transactions are instantly reconciled there, and this allows you to issue PDF invoices that contain clickable PayPal links that will auto-reconcile that invoice, and if people did want to pay the rest by bank transfer then it would be easy to join that up together too (with payment references).

Oh... and cash flow works both ways. I put the final payment for my Seven on credit card, and have wiped it over 2 months. You cannot exclude credit card as any major purchase may be beyond cash on hand and require a little juggling on the buyer side.

does taking payment immediately put people off

Not if you have clearly communicated, short (< 1 month) and reliable delivery dates. If you fail any one of those three tests, people will wonder why you need to be holding their money for so long.

I would personally prefer to pay in full up front. The amount of money you are asking for is no more than a mid-range OTP full bike, so anyone genuinely in the market will have that kind of cash available. To me, a deposit seems more risky from the consumer side as it means, I've paid a significant sum of money without anything to show for it.