(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:26 am)
I’ve decided to get rid of the year, though I like it, and have replaced it with a fill-in area for the date. The reason that finally pushed me over was that I’m not actually sure how long it’s going to take to print and ship out all these forms. There are a lot of dependencies that I’m just starting to learn about, so I figured it would be safer to supply forms that would be useful for the next year. The profits from this run will go into figuring out how to handle customization of the year in future products; right now, it makes sense to just make this one a fill-in-the-blank. Not quite as pretty, but still pretty useful :-)
Here’s the final design:
I’ll be closing pre-orders on Monday. We have well-over 100 pad orders, so now I have to worry about how to accept money and fulfillment. I’m imagining this might take me a while to work out, though thanks to other readers I am looking at Shopify and Shipwire as possibilities for ecommerce and fulfillment. I have a paypal account, of course, but I’m not too keen on using them because of all the bad press I hear about them. I still have to get over to the post office and rent a post office box, and also ask them about bulk shipping at media rates (which I should qualify for). And then there’s the whole packaging challenge too…how can I make the package cool without adding a lot of expense?
You can add your pre-order to the original post, or revise your existing one if the idea of a pad without the pre-printed year isn’t what you want. I still don’t have final cost numbers yet, but I’ll post them as soon as they’re ready. All pre-orders will get an email confirming their order amount and requesting address information. Thanks for your patience!
UPDATE: Here’s how the Pre Orders work:
You mail email me via the contact form, or leave a comment with your email address stating:
- How Many Pads you would Like
- The City / State you are ordering from
I was not thinking of taking international orders right now, but please do indicate your interest anyway. If I can handle it, I’ll do it. If I have to fill out a customs form every time I ship something overseas, then that makes it less likely.
Your pre-order is NOT a real order, but an indication of your interest. After I close pre-orders, I will have an accurate count of how many pads I can print, and can get final pricing. Then I will send an email to everyone stating what the final costs will be, plus whatever shipping ends up being, and start accepting real orders. It will likely be a few weeks before people start getting pads, but I want to get ’em out as soon as possible!
16 Comments
Dave, you can use Amazon to do the fulfillment and money bit without any extra effort (and not need to build the whole site for just the one product)
Email me!!
Amazon didn’t seem to have what I needed when I contacted them. At least, they were not particularly helpful…they basically told me to read a page, and I read it, and didn’t see what I needed to do, and told them I wasn’t interested.
i’m sad about the loss of the date field. That was one of my favourite things .. but I do understand why … Good luck and I look forward to one day soon having my pad!
Hey… is there any plans to do the PowerUser version in a booklet? I generally use those, printed 1/2 size for easily tucking in my day-planner. Something like that would be perfect for me.
Packaging: I can see a stiff cardboard envelope for small orders and a cardboard box for larger orders. To maximize exposure, everyone who sees the packaging including the mail handlers should know what’s inside. They are a strong marketing resource once they begin to recognize the brand. I would like to see a copy of your site design with the header image, contact info, and the actual page explaining the product. You could stick to one product page or even change up the packaging to reflect the product inside. Just a thought. Good luck.
I’m fine with filling in the date myself. Is there a pre-publication form ready for our use now? I like the new design with the time/schedule on the right, and want to try it out. I will miss the blue, is the green a personal preference? Finally, I like paying for things through PayPal. I haven’t read the bad press, what do people dislike about it? I’m ready to front some money right now, would it help if some of us paid now?
Penny: Yeah, I’m sad too! But I think with the amount of time left in the year, and the likelihood of fulfilling the order in time for the pre-printed pads to be good for 2007, create too much of a limited-time product. Keeping it generic for the first one will allow us to use the same plates to print reorders. I’m thinking that after we have enough working capital, we could start doing custom dates for EVERY DAY, which would rock! But to quote Contact, “Small steps, Elly. Small steps!” :-)
Gary: That’s a good idea! I’m sure that as we get this whole printing and selling thing worked out, booklets and other things will follow.
Randell: Thanks for the ideas! I haven’t thought about custom printing the boxes. This will add to expense I’m sure. Maybe doing a run of awesome stickers would be good for that on the outside (I love stickers, too). Will have to look into that. Doing inserts in the box too (the description) I think would be important too. It may be that I do all the fulfillment out of my house at first so I can make sure it all looks good.
Lynn: I’m sure I’ll accept PayPal…there’s no getting around it. The bad press I’ve heard about it revolve around awful customer service and small charity organizations using it getting locked out of their own funds. They’re part of the eBay empire too, which is growing increasingly irritating because of the hucksters on the service creating an environment of “us versus them” in their form-letter driven customer crap service, which seems to emphasize “volume of form replies sent” than “volume of problems READ and resolved.” I personally haven’t had problems with eBay, but have some friends that are going through hell just trying to straighten out their accounts. Grr.
Hey, great job.
It looks pretty snazzy.
I like the green in it, though the red seems to scare me. Well, can’t wait to get myself some.
I have used PayPal for my online business w/o problems for about 4 years. I do not use it for eBay.
However, I know of at least one payment I sent where I had to write PayPal and let them know that I did indeed intend to make a donation toward the medical care of a sick acquaintence. So I can understand the concern when it is used for non-business use.
Still … if you are doing your own fulfillment … it is a simple solution.
To follow on from Randell’s excellent marketing ideas – how’s about putting a sheet of moo stickers in the box for followup info? http://www.moo.com/products/stickers.php – 10 bucks for 90 stickers; 6 stickers a sheet, 15 sheets in a book for $10.
Just a thought…
Hi Dave,
I have used paypal in my online business for many years with no problems, it’s super easy and it makes shipping easy as well. I also use shopify for my vintage store and it’s good too. (if you want to take a look, it’s http://appleseed.myshopify.com )
If you’d like to talk about it, maybe we could chat in game! Or you could send me an email. :)
While I know you don’t exactly have a “logo” this is an idea:
Bryan Veloso did an order of t-shirts a while ago and shipped out most of the pre-orders with custom stenciled packaging:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djloche/209640502/
Not sure how you’d implement something like this, but it’s worth a shot: it’d make your packaging immediately recognizable.
David,
When should I expect to hear from you about these pads?
I e-mailed you my request at least a month ago.
I would like to see http://www.plannedparenthood.org/images/PPFA/chart-abtinence.jpg
charts taken from
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/birth-control-pregnancy/birth-control/fertility-awareness-based-methods.htm
redesigned in your style and with more colors :)
this is just a thought…
and yeah, i’m a girl :)
David, is this downloadable as a PDF anywhere?
/s