Selling Shapeways products to etsy, external website, other e-shops etc.

I was wondering how can I sell Shapeways products on my website, or etsy for example.
For websites, I know about the Shapeways widget, however sometimes designers need to keep the customer on our site and not redirect him to Shapeways forcing him to register and buy the product there.

Recently, I 've set up an e-shop featuring designs that I produce on Shapeways. On that site I accept PayPal payments (I can accept credit cards as well if I want).

Now here is my question: How can I sell from my website and send the product directly to the customer from Shapeways while discarding the Shapeways receipt?

Once a customer visits my site and purchases a product, I want to be able to do the following:
1. Login to my Shapeways shop and order the product
2. Send it to my customer's address directly from Shapeways (the address that he/she submitted upon registration on my site)
3. Add a gift wrap option
4. Discard the price/receipt from Shapeways (since my customer has already paid the additional markup on my site, and not only the base cost of the product that I paid in order to send the product from my Shapeways shop account to the customer)
5. Shapeways sends the gift-wrapped product to my customer and discards the price/receipt.

Also, what about sending the product to a different country?

I know that keeping items in stock and ship them myself could be a solution, however I can't keep all of my items and their combination in sizes/colors/materials in stock.

There are many e-shops out there selling jewelry, gadgets and accessories, and I could contribute to many of those and sell trough their websites (when I sell a product, that means Shapeways sells too), but what about the issues mentioned above?

Any help on this would be great

How much more are you prepared to pay? The SW prices are for the setup as-is and any changes will clearly cost them.

How will you deal with returns?

Hi AmLachDesigns,

I am not talking about the Shapeways prices at all. I am only talking about the ability to send a product directly from Shapeways to a customer who bought it from my site. In fact, I am talking about an option for shop owners to discard the price/receipt from the package. Also the ability to send as many/whatever country I want.

Returns is an issue, but can be clarified at the Terms & Conditions of a site appropriately.

Check out the "Shapeways API" documentation, this sounds about like it. Also look around on bathsheba's site - if there are
any shapeways programming tricks I suspect she would be the one to use them to full effect. (Besides, her zoatron WebGL
thingy is fun to play with - turning names and words into strange sculptures reminiscent of cambrian sea life)

I don't see that this is going to be an option you will achieve at this time.

from https://www.shapeways.com/support/shipping?li=footer
There is also the whole issue of VAT. Your website would have to collect, report and pay VAT to each of the countries where it applies - not to mention that the Shapeways price varies by the destination country (due to VAT).

Thank you for your reply stonysmith,

Indeed, I am afraid I won't achieve this option soon...

However, I see that lots of shop-owners have external shops and they collect credit cards or use paypal on their environment. Do you think they all keep their items in stock? Or there is something (a method) I am missing?

Yes, order (tip: join as many items as you can), keep stock, sell yourself to final customer. Bonus: you can postprocess and offer extras.

SW has no dropship option, even inside the same country.

Dittoes, even with the API there's no drop ship option. Not what I expected -- I abandoned the idea of using Shapeways for automated custom designs, which I was very enthusiastic about, because of this lack.

I can't say I understand the reasoning.

:cry:

uptomuch - sells Shapeways prints via etsy, Sandy basically adds Shapeways lead time to his own, and that is the eta for his Etsy customers' purchases. Not sure how well he does though.

Paul
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stop4stuff Modeller for hireShapeways Shop - Controller PendantTwitterYouTube​

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Sry, I realized my question is specific to US and Amazon , so posting it as a separate issue.

Just chiming in to say... Yes this is an important issue to tackle!! Hopefully the Shapeways crew picks up on this... There's no way I am stocking anything since most items I sell are generated/one of a kind... and... shipping to me, and then me shipping to the customer... adds unneeded cost and confusion...

I don't even mind not having my own packaging... so it's a free promotion opportunity for Shapeways!

Just send me the bill as pdf... don't include in the shipping... voila

I sell on Etsy, and I keep all my pendants in stock, but all my rings are made-to-order - there is a wait time of 4 - 5 weeks for them on Etsy. No way around it, sadly - I can't possibly keep all sizes / finishes in stock.

I do the same but I also keep stock of my rings. Not much, 5-6 generic sizes (usually US 6 - 12) for each design. When somethings sells, I restock it.
If it's popular, I restock 2-3 pieces instead of one. Sure, there are a few lost sales along the way and I can't stock in multiple materials and finishes but It's a thousand times better than having something custom ordered to Shapeways and then have it rejected. Peregrine knows what I'm talking about...

Boy, do I xD Though luckily and thankfully, Shapeways has never rejected a Zelda Songring, either because I specifically designed them to never fail checks by exaggerating the proportions or because I've just had so damn many of them printed by now (going on 1000+ in total, I think).

I really wish I could keep my Zelda Songrings (the big sellers) in stock, but it's just totally impractical for me to do that. 21 songs * 3 finishes * 8 sizes = 504 separate rings to be kept in stock at all times, not to mention tracked and inventoried, and that's if I only choose to keep ONE at a time in stock. Nah, doesn't work.

You are lucky for not getting any rejections for your main sellers. Still, problems arise and when the client is waiting, the situation is undesirable to say the least. I am trying to stay away from this headache.
BTW if I had sells in the hundreds I would be making a regular production run with my rings. It would actually be cheaper and with much better materials/finishes.

Problems do indeed arise, though I don't know that that's a problem that could be fixed by not doing a made-to-order model - made-to-order or not, the sprues would still need to be attached somewhere.

I wouldn't even know where to start looking to get these things made in normal production runs - and in any case, call it silly if you want, but I do believe in supporting 3D printing. I'm getting the business, which means Shapeways is getting the business, which means 3D printing can advance quicker and better (hopefully). We need people to invest in the frontier for it to be tamed.