cart of some type

[RJ]

As we approach 3100 members and with the urgeing of a number of members and one staff member I am considering creating a shopping cart or store or something to allow the members to put there pcb orders in that way. Along with showing what quatities are avaliable. This will help me in cutting down on the time I spend dealing with the stuff I think.

I am also being told it will make it easier for the members. I do have some reservations on this as I fell it is bad enough with people thinking DLA is some kind of a business and this makes it in my opinion look more so.

That being said I also have an issue of trying to figure a way to do this. You see in a business you are out to make profit and you have paid people to do the work. So this make ecommerce easier for two reasons.

One - you charge enough shipping that even if it does vary you actuall are making money and you never have to worry about over charging postage. Also since you are making money from the product you have room there also.

Two - you can do flexible postage as you have people to do shipping for you. We are more limited I have to use padded envelopes and flat rate boxes to keep the work load managable for me or I can not do it as it is difficult enough to justify as it is.

With these not being the case think about trying to setup a cart to handle postage for me. I always had you pm me so I knew what I could fit what you were wanting into and could do the postage based on that.

If you want 2 ssc's and pigtails I can get than into a padded envelop but if you want more than I have to go to a Flat rate medium box. The difference is over twice the cost. On the other hand you could get 1 SSC and pigtail and need a flat rate box if your order contained something that would not fit in the padded enveople or likely would not arrive with the package intact sent that way.

Nothing I have seen that I can afford the money for has that kind of smarts to be able to do and so there I am.
Before you say do the item and then pm us the shipping my comment is now it made it more work and will not be any benifit to me.

Also I only want a solution that will only allow members of the forum to see or order from the cart. No Guest orders and no outside orders. It is not my intention to do all this work for people who are not members. Coops and pcbs ect should be for the members only as we can not even get enough out to them as it is.

I am also considering just allowing the coops and no longee having any spares, It a little like walking on egg shells on some of this as everyone seems to have strong opinions on it.  Please keep our comments to the positive and try to look for what is best for all and limit the "This is best for me" influences.

RJ

[tng5737]

Why not just have coops once or twice a year - just for the pcb's.   You wouldn't have to offer the pcbs at any other times.   A member would have to think ahead a bit to see what his needs might be for the comming year but we are probably doing this already!    The actual coop could be run by other parties so you wouldn't necessarily have that workload.   You'd be just the supplier of the pcbs!   For new offerings you would still have just pcbs as well as kits like you do now and memebers could order extra at that time as well!

[jnealand]

Maybe a couple of the "staff" or long time members could become pcb repositories instead of just you.  I know that might make people order from more than one source, but it could be one person for LEs and the old dongle, one person for the splitters, ssr4, freestyle  one for wireless, and you for all the first time new stuff.  New folks almost always want an LE or two and a dongle.  folks into smart strings will want more of same.  It will cost us users a little more, but we are all supposed to be sharing the load here and that includes the load on you.  I for one would want you to be more involved in design and 2nd level troubleshooting than in PCB distribution issues.  I also want to make sure you have time for your own personal life.  Let's cut down the stress.  Heck, I'm retired and live near two post offices so even I could be a pcb warehouse.  no biggie

[mykroft]

Maybe there comes a time of trying to be too flexable - which is time consuming and takes you away from other things that need to be done.

I for one would not be upset about paying by weight and going either 1st class or parcel post and a processing fee to cover supplies etc...

Flat rate is great cause the boxes are free and understand why you try and use it ....

There has to be a compromise somewhere - have all your time taken up shipping this stuff out - or let you play/design and get us new toys - I select the latter.....

People can not expect you/crew/staff/volunteers to make everything 100% perfect for everyone - myself - this is a hobby that i enjoy and expect costs/hickups/bumps in the road to get there....

Myk

update/question:  I know this is a extra step - but can a cart let a member place the order, order is put on hold until verified.  Verify/update the order to add shipping to it - what will fix in what flate rate box etc - only go flate rate boxes - no padded envelops etc - again make it easier - then update the other, the cart sends out a order update notice for them to review/pay - and then we are off the the races....

Kinda like alot of the big ones out there do, your order go thru several stages before packed/shipped.....

[RJ]

Have not seen one that will do it in the low cost range I was looking at. I just did not want to spend like for the big name setup where they charge like $50 a month or some perscentage of sales as you can imagine it would get into some serious money over the year.

I wounder if we could charge just the cost of the pcbs and have additional items of shipping for like /padded envelope/ flat rate med/ ect. that the user adds based on what he is getting. Or would people add 12 express pcbs and try to pay a padded envelope rate for me to ship when there is no way to do that?

RJ

[deanathpc]

Being that I've designed some web sites before I have looked at shopping carts etc. also.  There are so many options out there that you need to nail down what exactly it is you want to do then search accordingly.  Otherwise you will be looking for a solution forever with disappointment.

mykroft: yup there are some that do that.  You can make the whole process into stages.  But RJ is looking for a solution to solve his time doing shipping.

Companies have shipping departments and that is their only purpose.  Shipping can be a burden and time consuming to say the least.  If you can have FedEx or UPS come and pickup the stuff that's one thing but USPS doesn't offer that.

I know there are solutions out there.  It's all based on what you want to do.  If you can find an open source solution you stand a better chance of it doing what you want it to do and if it can't it's a whole lot easier and cheaper to get that solution built.  With all the members on here I'm sure we can come up with something.

Dean

[dmaccole]

RJ:

FWIW, when ordering from the other hobbyists-turn-entreprenuers, shipping is always a later-stage portion of the order process.

For example, when you buy from Dave Moore at HolidayCoro, you order the product(s) and then wait. Within 24 hours, he sends you a PayPal invoice with the shipping when he has evaluated the order. He always gets stuff into the smallest container he can.

But I agree with Dean: decide what is the easiest for you and then spec the solution. We can find you an open source product that can do it for you at no cost.

\dmc

[rogerwh]

I do have some reservations on this as I fell it is bad enough with people thinking DLA is some kind of a business and this makes it in my opinion look more so.

I think the above is huge especially in terms of how the feds/state may look at this in terms of taxes, both income and sales tax.  Would think you need to be very cautious here.

[chrisatpsu]

Could the coop manager that ran a coop. Be the contact for that PCB after the coops has been finished?  Say john smith ran the express coop, but had all of the pcbs and was the contact after  the coop finished.

Or if you wanted a coop manager that wouldnt mind being the PCB guy for awhile. You can keep track via the pcbs available post.  It  might even be a good way for someone wanting to be a coop manager to get started.

[jeffcoast]

Companies have shipping departments and that is their only purpose.  Shipping can be a burden and time consuming to say the least.  If you can have FedEx or UPS come and pickup the stuff that's one thing but USPS doesn't offer that.

USPS will pickup packages if you have the postage on them already. I go on their website and just print out the flat rate postage and stick them on the boxes. Granted, I keep a supply of them, and I think the mailmen carry a few of them with them, but that would probably depend on your area. You just have to either put the box in your mailbox or catch them when they are delivering for the day.

[jeffcoast]

I do have some reservations on this as I fell it is bad enough with people thinking DLA is some kind of a business and this makes it in my opinion look more so.

I think the above is huge especially in terms of how the feds/state may look at this in terms of taxes, both income and sales tax.  Would think you need to be very cautious here.

This would just require you to keep careful records showing the cost of the items and how much postage you paid to mail out to show you didn't make any profit. If you did happy to make a little from saving on postage, it would need reported on one of the schedules on your income tax as a small business income. And in reality RJ probably is already doing that just in case he is ever audited.

[lineman]

I not sure of a solution but believe RJ is more useful as a whole in trouble shooting and designing so what if the coops were run only by staff , This way RJ time can be spent how ever he chooses, as for the spare pcb,s just do away with it and if enough people need them coop just pcb and let the sale/ trade forum work for the single needs, most people have a spare or 2 they could help the person looking and as for shipping just use small or med or lrg flate rate this way when someone orders they will have a idea what it will cost to be shipped.Don't know how to ease gettin the boxes to the post office

[OkieJay]

Perhaps you could appoint a certain number of board members as dealers that buy in quantity from you and then handle the individual orders for members in their area.  You would set the price for both the dealers orders from you and the resale prices (perhaps allow the dealers a $0.25 markup on small boards and $0.50 on large boards to cover cost of tape and such).  Since the prices would be posted on the board, you should not have any problems with dealers overcharging.  If one does, you remove them from the board and cutoff their customer base.  This method would allow you to only have to handle orders from a few dealers and the members would still be able to get boards.  Just a thought. 

I would consider it an honor to be a dealer for my area and even if you don't want to make this official, I would still consider buying extra boards and making them available to others at cost plus shipping if you would allow me to do so.

My 2 cents,
Jay

[devoidelk]

You could do the cart idea but only send out the pcbs once a month instead of on demand.. And about not being sure what to charge for shipping just have certain items tagged to different shipping containers like the LE we all know needs a medium flat rate box... So have a filter for the shipping calculator to make adjustments for that.... Just my thoughts on it I hate that our leader is having to stress over this.

[RJ]

What if I did like some of the DIY guys that went into business they just charge for a Med flat rate box for every order. I could then refund for small stuff since it is easy to refund. Or maybe thay would be a pain also.

Or I could have the shipping as seperate items and it up to the user to choose the size needed for the items they are buying. Then if someone chooses too small I can cancel the order with the a note sort of like when user mess up coop payments.

The ideas about sending the pcbs out to others to ship is good but would add more cost as you have shipping a couple of times added in.

RJ