Sales give away markup. support my proposal to fix

please vote on https://feedback.shapeways.com/forums/111989-shapeways-feedba ck/suggestions/2480415-don-t-giveac-away-are-markup-amount-w ith-sales

it is a proposal to make 2 changes so shapes does not give away are markup when they put sales on only the print cost like they are doing right now.

Exactly how does a reduction in print cost affect a markup?
That makes no sense to me.

Stony, if a sale is on only the print cost, and at check out it tells you how much you saved, you can use that to figure out what the original print cost was, and from there figure out how much the mark up is. Example, an item is $15 and there is a 10% sale. If you save a dollar than you know the print cost is $10 and the mark up is $5.

...and?

Oh, ok.. I see. I thought that the "give away" comment above was about "loss of revenue" rather than "tell others".

Personally, I don't mind at all that others know what my markup is, but.. I'm purely operating at the hobbyist level here... this is not my DayJob.

For what it's worth, I can estimate fairly easily what someone is using for a markup, purely from the bounding box dimensions and the minimum wall thickness. There are obviously some models out there that either are a solid hunk of plastic (not hollow) or they have a very large markup added to them.

So it comes down to.. figuring out the amount of markup is not all that hard. I don't see where a generous cost-to-print sale that drives extra customers to my shop is giving away information that my customers aren't already smart enough to figure out.

My decision to purchase is never conditional upon what I think someone's markup might be.. but rather what the (final) price of the item is versus my intrinsic "need" for the item.

Of course, having grown up in the Great Depression, my momma raised me to never pay retail for something that I was capable of making myself.

I must say.. Bill said it SO much more succinctly than I did..

well if they show discount at checkout then the only way to hide the print cost is to have the discount show based on regular price and allow shop owner adjust there markup for the sale and have this adjusted markup show up in the sale discount factor.

Maybe not everyone cares if people know how much it costs to make verses the cost to sell but I am sure there are lots that do care and there must be ways to make the sales happen without also making the markup happen.

An alternative and maybe a better option is to have a field.

"On sales reduce markup by x% of sales discount"
where 100 would reduce your markup by same percentage as sale and -100 would keep your sale price the same but provide you a higher markup.

As Shapeways emphasise keeping customer details secret from the designers of their purchases, it would be best if they would (at least) apologise for revealing what many designers regard as sensitive information in this well-meant but poorly-thought-out manner.

ON FURTHER INVESTIGATION...

Having looked at the order process, the information isn't directly revealed. Someone who wanted to know how much a designer marked up WSF items would need to know the price both during the discounted (sale) period and the price outside that period.

However this is not beyond the abilities of a nefarious (or merely curious) user.

Given that the relationship between SW and individual designers should be conducted in a meticulously businesslike manner, this is a bit of a slip-up.

\sign


Shapeways' discount is not intended to raise your markup.

It sounds as if you are ashamed of what you charge for your expertise

Ok guys, just because you don't agree doesn't mean Mctrivia isn't entitled to his opinion. If you have your mark up setup for a specific price, maybe you'd want to opt out of a sale? And if not showing your mark-up is a sign of shame, every business that I know of is ashamed of their mark up. And from my experience they more than should be. So if you don't support Mctrivia, don't vote on his uservoice item. As a Shop owner, I don't care. So if it were to change to be less transparent, I wouldn't care as long as it didn't effect my operations.

Ashamed no. My markups are very low because I am trying to hit a serten price point(mostly under $10) . However percentage wise it can very from 10% to 200% depending on the model weight. I would like the option for even on sales that they still all have the same pricing.(Maybe 8.99 instead of $9.99) instead of all having strange price differences.

Also there is a sicological effect when someone figures out the markup is 200%. Does not matter that I took 3 hours to make it and am likely only to sell 1 to 3 of them at $6 profit each.

I think trying to match the price of a 3D printed piece with that of something that is mass produced is a mistake, that can only end in tears. Remember that the production cost of an item that sells on the high street for $10 is not likely to be more than about $1 Really?
I would suggest the only people that are really interested in the markup are those who would like to get into the business. In general most people don't have a clue about what things actually cost to make. The way most people judge value is by comparing your products with similar items. The problem we are all struggling with is that 3D printed products are not like anything else.
Subsidising your customers does not make for a sound business model :confused

to me it is a hobby so to make $1 to $2 an hour is ok considering most hobbies I have had lose money. To make real money I go to my day job or big on free lance jobs. To make them sell I set the price at $9.99 because few are willing to pay more then $10.

As for trying to compare to a retail product. I don't and I am much more(7x or so) expensive then the retail products.

The point is profit margins are generally kept secret and it would be nice if shapeways would put measures in place to allow us to keep it secret also. There are some on here that are doing this as a real business. And as the cost of 3d printing goes down and accuracy goes up more and more will chose 3d printing as an option.

Most of my models can not be made by traditional methods, some can but not in an economical way.

Mess the whole shop up, just to have "nice" prices on the shopping card,
while people are still able to calculate the actual markup ?
Doesn't make much sense to me...

(Probably I miss something. ^^)

don't know why anyone would want to opt out of a sale. i just want a way to adjust markup to hide it. Maybe if there was a 20.11% discount I would be willing to give up 10.05%(50% of discount) out of my markup. Maybe I would like the chance to make an extra 10% on a sale still saving the customer some money but allowing me to get more for my time. This method would be the easiest to program. and shapeways would have to decide if they would let us enter negative values.

It seems like the simple solution is to adjust your markup during the sale, or just not make your items available during said sale. Although I'd be happy to be able to OPT IN to any sale which would be much simpler than other proposals, thus my markup would be reduced by 20.11% during this sale. This would perfectly mask any markup, while providing added incentive to my 'value minded' customers. I've seen an uptick in sales of my WSF items during this, and it's unfair to let Shapeways do all the marketing while I reap the benefits.

Weighing in on this, I would prefer that markups not be directly visible, but it is not all that important.

On the issue of markups being high or low, there can be many reasons for having various markups. Other than the pricing consistency McTrivia mentioned, it is often necessary to make an investement that does not immediately return profits. That is actually the Shapeways model, partly subsidizing model costs during the growth phase until momentum brings prices more in line with what we are used to in mass production. Personally, I underprice my smaller models because they are not going to be a major source of income anyway, and take very little time to edit. I consider it advertising for my design services, which is how I actually make money. I have been giving away 3D-printed promotional items for years and it has worked very well. People don't forget it, and I've had many customers come to me as a result of seeing one of the items I gave or sold to someone else. The extreme version of this is what China is doing to us right now. By dumping electronics and other products on us at a loss they have wiped out all the competition and taken the whole market.

The other side of that coin is that many people associate price with quality, and artificially inflated prices are actually a central element to aspirational branding. Do you think a Starbucks coffee actually costs anything near the $4.50 you pay for it? No, it's part of the branding and it depends on the context of the sale and the type of product. Since 3D print production costs are already high, this is a tough sell.

The only reason I support concealing the markups is that most people don't have even a basic understanding of these issues. I would rather we just talk about it openly so that people don't feel inclined to do the creepy analysis of people's shops that Mctrivia describes.

Btw, I still sell 3D prints at retail stores, and while I don't sell many items, I do move stacks of business cards, which is just as important.