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Maker Business – Shipping

Your second most important relationship is with your package carrier

Rule #10: Your second most important relationship is with your package carrier.

Dealing with shipping has been the most un-fun part of this whole process. That said, it has been very interesting being on the other end of the shipping world.

I’ve got a PO Box at the Post Office a few blocks from my house, and I gave some consideration to using the USPS (and while I certainly want to save the USPS, I can’t do it at the expense of my business.) Ultimately a combination of poor service and a lack of being open late ruled them out for now.

So on a recent Saturday I had plans to go to the UPS store near my house and talk with them about shipping options. I’d already set up a UPS account, and linked it to PayPal (yeah, I’ll get into payment stuff in a future post) but wanted to talk to a real person about the process. Sadly, the UPS store closed about 20 minutes before I got there, so I ended up going across the street to FedEx. The FedEx employee was extremely helpful, and explained how it all worked. The only bothersome thing was that I won’t know the actual shipping price until I have an address. Even if I ship 10 packages all the same size, weight, etc. they may all be different prices. I asked them to run a sample based on a size and weight I had, and when they needed an address, I gave them NYC Resistor‘s since it was easy to find with a quick search on my phone.

The FedEx employee also talked about shipping boxes, and I bought an 8x8x8″ box to take home and see if it was the right size. It was $1.75, and I’m glad I only bought one, because I can get about 6 of them from Uline for that price. Update! Uline sucks. They helped fund an insurrection. I stopped using them years ago. See Also: refuseuline.com

So now I’ve got an account with the USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I’ve also sold one unit, which I’ve shipped out. The shipping I charged was pretty close to what it actually cost to ship it. I’m not an expert on PayPal, but it looks like you can set things up to calculate shipping costs during purchase if you use UPSP or UPS, both of which can be integrated into PayPal. As I mentioned, I’m using FedEx right now. Oh, and FedEx needs a phone number to ship things (?) which I did not have on the PayPal order page, so I had to add that. So yeah, shipping is a pain in the ass.

OK, well, that’s all I want to say about shipping right now. I mentioned PayPal a bit, so I’ll dig into that in a future post. I’m also sure I’ll have more posts on the subject, even though we’ve covered all of the Ten Rules.

(See all the posts in this series: Begin, Stock, Buy Smart, Basic Rules, No Leeway, Be Open, Community, Manufacturability, Marketing, Shipping, Lessons Learned, The Real Costs.)

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Maker Business – Marketing

Marketing is your job

Rule #9: Marketing is your job.

Marketing you say? Hell yeah, I got this one…

I mean, marketing is all about making things look good, right? Check this out:

The Button

OK, I’m only slightly kidding. I know marketing is more than just pretty pictures, and making things look good, but I do believe that’s definitely a part of it. Just look at the stuff that Evil Mad Science or Adafruit does. They both do their best to provide good, clear photos of their products. Check out the Make Flickr Pool. Some photos are really terrible, and others are really well done. I’m much more likely to view a photo and read about a project if the photo is awesome. (Awesome photos can also help you get in the roundup.)

I may have a bit of an edge, because I’m sort of a photographer, but even if you aren’t, there are some great tutorials online to improve your photography no matter what you shoot with (even an iPhone!) and if it’s really important, find someone to take good photos! If you can find a maker who would take some great photos in exchange for a free widget, send them the widget. A good set of photos go a long way.

OK, enough about photos… on to the other parts of marketing.

You should be blogging about your progress, and tweeting, too. Take pictures and videos of every milestone, and post those. Use every opportunity to talk about your work in progress and get people excited about it, which will not only start to form a community around it but will also build demand for it.

That’s all marketing. Community management is marketing. Tutorial posts are marketing. Facebook updates are marketing. Emailing other Makers in related fields is marketing. I suppose what I’m doing right now, writing this list, is marketing.

You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one knows about it, you may never sell one. Marketing is sharing, it’s telling your story. It’s also hit-n-miss, and there’s no formula to make sure your marketing is effective, but you need to do it anyway.

I’ll also add in this little update: I created a store, and have already sold one unit. Starting slow, right? I’ve not opened it to the general public yet, but invited a few interested people to order. I’ll ramp up a bit and see how it goes. As for the rules, the next one is not fun…

(See all the posts in this series: Begin, Stock, Buy Smart, Basic Rules, No Leeway, Be Open, Community, Manufacturability, Marketing, Shipping, Lessons Learned, The Real Costs.)

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Maker Business – Manufacturability

Design for manufacturability

Rule #8: Design for manufacturability.

I have not designed for manufacturability, and I think for what I am doing, that’s fine. I’m basically acquiring all of the parts, doing a bit of soldering, a bit of programming, some drilling, filing and painting, and then some assembly.

The actual manufacturing of all the bits (at this stage) is happening elsewhere in the chain. Speaking of the chain though, I can already see (even with my initial run) that any area for small improvement can become a large improvement when you multiply it by 10, or 100, or 1,000 or more. That said, I’m considering investing in some better equipment. The hole saw I was using is just slightly too small. For a one-off thing, that was fine, as I didn’t mind a few minutes of filing to size the hole correctly. That “few minutes” times 10 or 20 starts to add up. I’ve also got a mediocre soldering iron, and if a better iron can make the soldering go faster, that’s a benefit. Getting things done faster means you’re making more in less time, and if you’re paying yourself (and you should be) then your hourly rate just went up.

I’m barely into this thing and I can already see where large manufacturers look for the smallest of savings to cascade into bigger savings (of time and money.) One thing I really don’t want to compromise on though is quality. I still make sure every unit looks good, and functions. I test each unit after programming and after assembly.

And now for some good news… I’ve made my first sale! I haven’t really opened the store to the public yet, but for the dozen or so people who were really interested in the product, I’ve started emailing them and offering them the first chance at ordering. We’ll see how it goes from here. Who knows, I may sell the first batch and then no one will ever want to buy one again. It’s a distinct possibility, and I’m protecting against that right now by not keeping a lot of stock. Oh, I’ve also learned more about shipping this week than I ever wanted to, and I still feel like I know almost nothing. Fun times!

Oh, I’ll warn you now: the next post in this series will be filled with amazing insight. Stay Tuned! :)

(See all the posts in this series: Begin, Stock, Buy Smart, Basic Rules, No Leeway, Be Open, Community, Manufacturability, Marketing, Shipping, Lessons Learned, The Real Costs.)

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Drawbot at City Hall!

Friday Night Drawbot

Our own little Friday Night Drawbot got invited to City Hall!

(OK, well, that’s not exactly what happened, but that’s how I plan to tell the story…)

Milwaukee Makerspace took part in the first Art Jamboree held recently by the fine folks at Art Milwaukee, and while I couldn’t attend, the spunky little Friday Night Drawbot was able to make it, and he did his best to wow the crowd with his take on robotic art.

So here’s the deal… join us Friday, March 9th, 2012 at Milwaukee’s City Hall for the Art Jamboree, and if you’re lucky, you’ll walk away with art created by a Sharpie-wielding robot.

I’ll be there this time, and I hope to see you there as well.

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Laser. Cut. Wood. (Part II)

Laser Cut Box

In our last adventure cutting wood we had success! And it was good… So I decided to try the awesome BoxMaker again and I’m pleased with the result as compared to the previous attempt.

Above you’ll see the template I created from BoxMaker with a light bulb on one of the faces. I got the original bulb from OpenClipArt and tweaked the SVG file in Inkscape until I was pleased with it. (I may still need to adjust a few of the thinner areas, but I definitely like it.)

Bulb Box

In the next image you can see the results of the cut. This is using 3mm Baltic Birch plywood, which I highly recommend for the 25 Watt Laser Cutter that Milwaukee Makerspace has.

There’s actually one extra piece in the lower center which you’ll notice has straight lines, and is not part of the box, but this is the interesting part…

One thing about using the laser cutter is determining what settings to use. For this cut I used 100% power with 3.2% speed. It takes a few passes to complete the cut (maybe 4 or 5) but it works. I found that at slower speeds there is a higher risk of flames (which are bad!) and you can char the wood a bit too much. I actually didn’t care about the charring as I will be painting this box, but if you want less charring, up the speed a little bit, and know that you will need more passes.

Burninator

Oh yeah, the interesting part! In the image above, I’ve highlighted two areas. In the bottom red rectangle you’ll see a lot more charring. This is due to the long straight line that the laser cutter follows when cutting. I noticed that the notched areas, with lots of small short lines, had much less flame, while the long continuous lines had a lot more flame. (It was still within an acceptable amount of flame, but this is why I didn’t want to go lower than 3.2% for the speed.)

So I’m definitely calling this one a success, if only due to the fact that I’m pretty certain I’ve got good settings to use when cutting 3mm Baltic Birch plywood.

Also, lasers are awesome!