Weekend contest #26: What have you learned from us lately?

If you've been following along with us, we recently concluded our Shop Owner Challenge series. During the blog series, Coach Savannah Peterson lays out the path to victory as a shop owner on Shapeways. Yesterday, Savannah and Natalia led a Hangout to take Shop Owner questions, and to further discuss Shop Owner needs, comments, suggestions, and passed on some additional pointers. Where you there? That's ok, we recorded it for you!



What can you do to make your products 5 times more likely to sell?

Have you watched it yet? Well you should! In the hangout, Savannah and Natalia point out the top 3 things you as a Shop Owner can do to boost sales. So watch the video, find those 3 things, and boost your sales! Then share how you've been doing these 3 things on our Facebook page and you just may get a special holiday gift from us! (besides the boost in sales)

Deadline for the contest is Wednesday Dec. 4th, end of day. Little extra time for you to spend with your family and sleep off the tryptophan

And, as always, if you have more questions about boosting your shop, we are here for you! Check out Natalia's post here in the Shop Owner section, and use us as you need us!

I don't want to do all of that!

Savanna did a wonderful job! I carefully read the entire series, mainly to see how well she was doing on it.

I also watched Savanna's and Natalia's video. Another really great job both of you!

However, I'm probably not going to do all that I don't think. Or maybe I will someday, we'll see, but I'm feeling like probably not. What I want is for Shapeways to do all that for me! HAHAHA!! All I want to do is concentrate on creation and nothing else. It just sucks down so much time taking care of all those little details.

Isn't Shapeways currently making millions of dollars in profit? Well, then you can afford to hire a team to take care of all of that stuff. And make Savanna and Natalia the team managers!

Or how about this? Why don't you guys offer us designers something like shop creation services? Like I'll pay something like $50 for each item in my shop to be made spectacular with images! But, I don't want to pay to have everything printed too! I want you to keep those items and keep an inventory for me too so I CAN ADVERTISE MY STUFF! I cannot currently advertise because of the long lead times.

As you know, the French are already starting to make these kinds of moves, so you'll want to start thinking about how to implement all of this yourself.

Keep in mind that 3D printing technology is currently expanding very rapidly! Did you see all the new machines coming out by 3D systems? Of course you did! Well, their offering a somewhat affordable SLA machine. What does that mean? It means that when a giant like that has been trudging along for 30 years selling to industry all of a sudden has to start selling to the masses to stay on par, you can bet your bullets that in just a few years just about everybody pertinent is going to have their own types of highly capable 3D printers. Consequently, Shapeways needs to have something more backing them up than just a few rooms full of industrial printers. Shapeways is going to need to have an alliance with the designers. Such that they will still want to use Shapeways even though they have their own printing equipment.

As for MakerBot and Stratasys and 3D systems. Huge mistakes in my opinion overall! MakerBot for not staying open source and Stratasys and 3D systems for picking on the little guy with the lawsuits against Afinia and Formlabs. Unless Stratasys and 3D systems can come up with something absolutely spectacular to sell to industry they are going to pay the price. They will pay because they are not envisioning how open source machines will advance in the next 3 years. Industry will implement open source right along with everyone else, so their only hope was to stay friendly with the masses.

James is right. Shapeways needs to get ahead of the game and advance a loyalty program for the designers.
This will happen at some point anyway; just do it sooner than later on...

Great ideas guys!

And it's good to hear that this is something you really value, and would be willing to pay for.

It's an interesting change in business model as a designer, isn't it? When you had your own website, or wanted to sell to retail stores, you took photos yourself, you described your products to make them attractive for sale, and so on. Then you made the products (or had them manufactured) and then you packaged and delivered them yourself too.

Selling on Shapeways is great because the manufacturing, shipping and even selling online part is taken care of, which frees you up to design more.

What would having the "dressing up of your shop" taken care of free you up to do? More designing? Or more marketing? Would you rather us help you make your shop offering good, or would you rather have us leverage our ability to market your products to a huge audience so you can get more sales?

I know BOTH is the quick answer, but if you wanted one thing more, which would it be?

I'm curious!

Natalia

Hi Natalia!

I'd pick "dressing up of your shop", cuz I really hate taking photos.

On the other hand, if you guys would keep an inventory for me, then I would actually spend the time to dress up my shop myself. The reason is, I would then be able sell silver all over the world! I would have Shapeways manufacture and ship my designs and it would be wonderful! Although, I'd have to stick to non-patinated designs, I still think I could work within that envelope until Shapeways got around to offering patinating.

I already have most of my designs printed and sitting here and I could take pictures of them and all that, but what's the point of doing that when I know I'd have to spend a small fortune on making my own inventory and dealing with the hassle of shipping and managing transactions myself? I might as well spend the money on my own printing and casting equipment and do it myself, which I'm doing. hehe

I know Shapeways has a huge customer base, which I found out about when you guys featured my DNA ring, but compared to eBay and Amazon it's insignificant in comparison. Yet, I cannot advertise in those areas without being able to have my designs shipped within the time frame envelope that people expect.

One of you ought to open up Shapeways accounts on Amazon and eBay, pick 20 items to sell, print them out and have them ready to be shipped and then create ads for those products on those sites and see what happens. I assure you you will be amazed at response! Or, I already have accounts at those sites, print out some of my designs and sit them in a box on your desk and we can try it out!

Hey guys, adding in that your suggestions are appreciated but would fit better in the suggestions section instead of this contest post. So please feel free to give us your suggestions in a post in the suggestions section.

In that case, shouldn't you have posted this thread in the suggestions section?

Strange that you would ask a question of us here and then when we reply you tell us not to reply here.