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

Also, for the love of God don't make your credit card fee transparent - I've used a bunch of places recently and all it does is make me feel annoyed. I paid something like £70 extra recently to pay with a credit card (work on the car) than it would have cost with a debit card.

I'd far rather the garage had set it's pricing so they made a little extra if I'd paid with a debit card, rather than giving me a very irritating additional charge, on top of a large primary charge - which was the very fucking reason I decided to put it on a credit card.

i.e. quote a single, fixed price - don't fuck around with additional charges, add VAT afterward, or any other douche bag behaviour.

I think it depends entirely on lead times and reliability of those lead times. From a personal point of view I was completely happy with the bank transfer and staged payment, but I suspect that's because 1) I know Matt and his workmanship and 2) I accept that getting involved in something like this at an early stage involves an element of fluidity in processes.

If this were further down the line, and I were someone evaluating Isen against someone else doing something similar, I suspect I'd want full visibility and confidence on lead time before putting the whole lot down up front.

The payment method wouldn't really bother me, in large part because I can see very clearly from the marketing who is involved and where the business is.

As for any useful suggestions, have you looked at Gocardless? I know in theory it's best for recurring payments rather than one off, but my local fitness studio uses it fairly frictionlessly for one-off payments. The gateway they use is fairly intuitive for the consumer. I have no idea what it costs the merchant, but is direct-debit based, so should be cost effective.

a very irritating additional charge, on top of a large primary charge - which was the very fucking reason I decided to put it on a credit card.

So true. British Airways and others, how do you expect me to pay for £2k holiday for the family!?

Plus one to paying up front. No barrier in my opinion.

Audi rs6's, coke, rolexes etc

I know this is a joke, but isn't that a choice between whether you make the frames yourself, or whether you spend your time building a business and brand and outsource manufacturing? I guess the latter doesn't float your boat, but did anyone get rich doing the former?

A little off topic how are the hope wheels?

Talbot will be where I whet my whistle building silly things in a cost inefficent way. In the near future I don't intend to do any Isen 'muck work'. As you say, you dont't get rich by doing work yourself, but by getting other people to do it for you. However, you don't have to outsource it, if anything that just adds another layer of profit skimming. We want to be a UK manufacturing business, no "Designed in the UK" big union jack bullshit. There is no reason why this is financially unviable, especially at the units we are selling, and it will only become more sensible the further down the shitter the UK economy plunges.

You need to employ some welders?

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).

@coldharbour If it's an ops problem rather than a 'this is turning my customers away' problem, and it sounds like it might be, I'd look at this kind of approach, if it's better value than some kind of web-shop.

You could take full money up front, 50% non-refundable, per example.

Realistically, I will need to train some. There is one chap I know who has the skills needed (George I'm looking at you) , but bicycle welding holds a few problems:

1. Very thin walled tubing. You would normally start life with much thicker stuff, and may only ever weld thick wall (more than 2mm) so hiring someone with TIG welding experience doesn't mean you can just chuck them at a pile of bikes. Combine horrible compound mitres (looking at you BB cluster) and dissimlar materials and wall thickness (stainless drop outs to ferrous stays, 1.6mm BB shell to 0.6mm seat tube and down tube) and there would probably be a lot of practice needed. Not saying there aren't people out there capable, obviously there are loads but this leads onto the next problem:

2. Money. A really good TIG welder can earn proper money. More than bike trade money.

The way I look at it is the difference between a car body shop and bicycle finishers. A body shop could be really good at painting cars, but give them a bike and they'll make a mess of it. Conversely bike finishers can't necessarily paint cars. Anyone who has seen the mess that is my Volvo can attest to this.

I am going to be doing the welding, or at least some of it for a little while. But already we have employed people for mitring, cutting, emails and half the paint, and plan to continue with this.

I think a payment button is really useful for locking in undecided's, or for flitty '#buyers.

We are competing with the likes of Mason and Bowman, if Neil was umming and aaahing about a Isen or a Mason, I fear he would go with the Mason if we didn't have a buy it now button or at least deposit.

@mdcc_tester has probably the most prescient point: Can you deliver quickly, and in a known time? The answer to this must surely be: How far away can we keep matt from the transaction?

Can I pay you to do a frame-building course?

Seeing as it's you..........

No ;)

I get it. You're threatened.

Understandable.

But srsly, would pay to learn and build my own bike.

It's a good point, but I don't know whether it's a good enough reason to either do it or not if that makes sense? Especially with the level of easily available cheap credit on the market atm. As @Velocio said, he spread his Seven on a card, and PP even has their own credit options available now...

"Dov, you need to stop standing so close behind me while I'm on working with the mill it's dangerous!"

That sort of threatened?

"Hold on, WHERES MILDO!?!"

Not enough Matt or workshop to go round alas. @eyebrows built a great bike with someone in North London, from seeing that I could recomend. There are places like Bicycle academy as well, but I worry that all the hashtags would annoy you....

Yes true, I've only recently got my first credit card so getting to grips with this sort of thing.

In other unrelated but related news. I would also like to give you money in exchange for you showing me how to build my own bike at some point in the less busy future

Can I come too? I want to try and beat Dov at welding.

Let customers choose their payment terms by tieing it to something they value; speed of delivery.

Pay in full 'Now', bike ready in 1 month, (or whatever you already is realistic, not just from the cutting/mitring/welding/painting timescales but also from the typical dithering/mind changes/can you add a ..... queries that Customers are prone to),
Pay 50% now, 50% in 6 weeks, (letting everyone have at least another monthly paycheck), bike ready in 2 months, (or whatever etc),
pay 50% now, 25% in 6 weeks, 25% in 12 weeks, delivery in 4 months, (or whatever etc).

Let the customers pay for what they clearly value and can easily put a monetary value upon.

This is known as 'Framing' in psychology and behavioural economics.
Credit Card Fees were once all told to the customer and seen as a tax on using credit card which nobody feels good about, the way it was resolved was by instead referring to that tax as a discount to those people using debit cards. In modern times there normally isn't any difference like you say, but this is the way it was combatted originally. This way, people don't feel hard done by using their credit card at all and continue to use it over the debit card.

Because that's easy to administer and not a complete operational nightmare

You've got two hopes.

Bob and No