I finally finished shipping out a group buy and I thought I’d share some thoughts I had about running a group buy. I don’t really have any organization to this article so just bear with me.
It’s going to be a lot more work then you think I knew going into this I’d be putting in some hours for this but I lost a lot of sleep trying to print shipping labels and getting my spreadsheet setup. I would highly recommend that you use only *one* spreadsheet. I made the mistake of using two spreadsheets and it was a nightmare trying to triple checks my work and making sure that I didn’t transfer the information over incorrectly. That was a major source of stress.
The actual packing process for me was easy. But I was packing shirts and not keycaps. That was probably the fastest part of the whole process.
Invoicing takes a while. So does printing out shipping labels for international addresses. Much much longer than expected.
Reference other group buys and use the tools they use.There is a reason that everyone who runs a group buy uses Google Docs spreadsheets and forms, Paypal Invoices, and Stamps.com. It really makes life easier. Don’t be stubborn like me and try and do things in a “new and improved way”. I did not improve the process at all. I just ended up making my life harder.
Uline is great for shipping materials if you don’t already have some. And make sure you have triple the amount of tape that you think you’ll need. I went through *a ton* of tape.
Murphy’s Law is alive and well.Don’t know what Murphy’s Law is? Goes like this: Anything can go wrong and it will go wrong. **** is going to happen, do the best you can to stay ahead of it.
In this buy, the international shipping label work really slowed me down. My lack of knowledge on shipping also didn’t help. I wrongly assumed that all international first class USPS packages could only be 13 oz or less. You can have heavier packages, just know they’ll cost more. I should have paid closer attention to the USPS shipping calculator.
One week my car died and then the next week I was working a lot of overtime hours trying to fix some problems at work. This pushed back my shipping schedule for about two weeks.
The nature of Murphy’s Law is that even with the best plan; you’ll still run into unavoidable issues. So the best way to avoid any bad feelings is to just keep people informed. There’s nothing I could do about my car
.
Make sure you have a backup plan as well. Perhaps consider instituting a groupbuy fee like IvanIvanovich does. The fee isn’t about making money as much as it’s about covering unseen fees. Things like taxes or shipping charges may pop up and are hard to predict until they happen.
I managed to assume that tax was included in the original price of the shirts, which it wasn’t. I was lucky enough to have people help me with that cost but it leads me to the next point.
Do your research and triple check your workIf you’re running a group buy, you’re selling people something. They’re going to want to know prices. They’ll want to know what happens if they change addresses or if they can get a green widget instead of a blue widget. You’ll need to have the answers for them.
And you’ll need to have a lot of answers. We’re shipping a widget to the Moon? What’s the cheapest way to get it there? Does UPS do three day shipping? People need to know!
How much packaging will it take to safely protect your widget on its trip to the moon? And if you’re buying all that packaging and the tape that goes with it, do you already have it on hand or do you need to buy some? I chose to buy supplies since I didn’t have any and pass the cost into the buy. Perhaps if you have the supplies on hand you don’t have to do this. That’s something that needs to be checked when you start your buy.
PatienceLast thing you’ll learn from running a group buy is you’ll get to experience the patience game from a different angle. Typically you’re in a group buy and you can’t figure out why the widgets take 5 weeks to make and ship. Well if you’re running the GB, you’re at the mercy of your widget maker and you’ll have to constantly field questions about what’s going on at the maker. Have two colors of widgets? Be prepared to know what shade it is down to the Pantone number. And then when you get your widgets, and you’re waist deep in widgets and tears trying to figure out how to ship it all yourself in time, you’re under pressure to ship on time. Then you’re in the unenviable position of trying to impart patience on people.
Why bother?This wasn’t meant to be all negative. There’s an immense amount of satisfaction involved. I’m really happy to have been able to take an idea to completion and provide Geekhack.org with some nice t-shirts. I love projects and working on something new so it was fun for me to give out shirts at Keycon, sell shirts at Keycon, and watch the “What did you get in the mail today” thread for the shirts.
Earlier this year, I proxied a bunch of 6019284 “Kishsaver” keyboards and it felt incredible to have thirty super rare and sought after keyboards in my apartment. It was like I was playing a small part in reviving keyboard history. Again, doing things like proxying and group-buys allows you to experience the community and this hobby in a completely new and different light. So, it’s not all bad. I just thought I’d point some things out.
In addition to some of my thoughts above, I thought
that jdcarpe's post reflected a lot of my own experience as well.
