"available in stock" service

Customers don't like to wait. Generally when a customer wants to buy, for example, a gift online he/she scours the net for a while, find some items, then narrow down the options. Let's say the customer is thinking between a jewelry from An online shop and shapeways. Like most people he/she has delayed the gift shopping till there's one or two weeks left. Now if the customer buys from the other site, it will be shipped instantly. But from shapeways he/she has to wait for the production, and it's long for the average customer. Also the customer has concerns whether the gift will arrive on time, what it will look like. It's a reasonable time for people like us the designers makers etc. But for others it's ambiguity, you know that.
The solution is to give the shop owners a limited amount of storage within the shapeways building. Let's say a shop owner can have a .... cm3 of space. The goods are produced, Let's say I order 3 pairs of one of my cufflink designs, 4 pairs of another one. I pay to shapeways but instead of having them shipped to me, I click let's say the "stash my order" button. When I do that, it's manufactured, checked, photographed and placed in my storage. Then when my customer buys it his money will be transferred to me. Photography should be professional and standardized, you know a Lot of people here make Fabulous designs, they get them successfully produced, but they put crappy pictures and no one clicks them. Standardization of photography also would be good, because We look at the page of jewelry there are small photos, big ones, dark ones, they are not in harmony and unity and the page looks distracting rather than flowing.
Believe me with a few people this can be done. And shapeways will benefit.
Best regards.

We don't want to be negative but there are a lot of downsides to this.

We'll start off with Shapeways taking pictures of our products : Hey Shapeways we really don't like how you have displayed our product in that picture, make me another one and another one until we like it !!!

Keeping stock :

Imagine thousands of shop owners that would like to keep stock @shapeways, the ones that don't have money for that will probably sell less because that other product from designer X ships the next day. Shapeways would need to move to another building to have space to keep all those products in stock.

What about personalised products? They will have an ever greater disadvantage because the designer also needs some time to upload the personalised design.

We don't want to keep stock on all our products, some sell frequently some rarely. The products that don't sell a lot won't be sold anymore because our top selling products are in stock.

What if the building is set on fire, you or Shapeways would need insurance for that.

We're afraid that we just have to wait for the next generation of industrial grade printers that produces products in minutes and transports them instantly to the customers.

The idea of pre-printing shelf stock is unlikely to happen.
https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/2394-2013-shapeways- 3d-printing-year-in-review.html

Shapeways has over 14,000 shops and 100,000 new models every month. If you gave each designer a simple decimeter cube (1000 cm3) of storage space, at 8 feet tall, you'd need a wall over 200 feet long. It would also be over $2 million in models to print (assuming WSF, not anything metal), most of which would never sell more than a single copy. And, that doesn't even begin to take into account shops like mine that present over 400 items for purchase.

The beauty of 3d printing (and the Shapeways business model) is that objects are produced ON DEMAND. There are zero resources (plastic, energy, labor) consumed until the buyer places an order. Yes, there is the downside of a small production time delay, but I consider that a very small price to pay to keep stuff out of the landfill. Disclaimer: I am in no way a environmentalist, but even I can see that it makes no sense to produce stuff and then throw it away after 2 years because it didn't sell.

On-Demand is the way to go.

Thank you for your comments dear Stonysmith and FabMeJewelry, you have my respect.

My father is running a car spare parts wholesale &retail business for 30+ years.
A car has 30.000 parts from hood to a little screw. Because of his style, he wants to have a car's every single part at hand. There are like 30 car models. And many of the parts are not just 1 in stock, there are hundreds of the same brake disc, thousands of the same screw. Let's not try to count and say my father has millions of parts in stock, the largest one is a full car chassis, the smallest one is a little washer. He has 20-25 employees in total, but just 4-5 of them are dealing with the stock. 2-3 of them is responsible for getting, packaging and loading the parts. The other 2 is sitting behing the computers, etc.


What do you see in the picture? I see 400 shops. A single shelf is 728 cm3. My cufflink's volume is 2.4 cm3. https://shpws.me/qT8X If you fill the shelf to the brim with cufflinks it contains 300 cufflinks. But it wouldn't be useful like that. Dividing the shelf in itself and practically choosing a limit, we can say it can contain 150 cufflinks. This is a solution for jewelry thing. But there are other solutions for shop owners who has big plastic parts. I don't accept "can't be dones" "impossibles" in my life. There's always a solution.

Now to clear my point.
1) I said, Shapeways should give "a limited amount of storage". The word limited changes everything and gives justice for all, FabMeJewelry. The word limited means it's not going to be a large investment for Shapeways, and it can't give dominance to a shop owner. Because it will not be enough. Everybody will have to choose what is going to be "stashed" wisely.
2) @FabmeJewelry said "We don't want to keep stock on all our products, some sell frequently some rarely. The products that don't sell a lot won't be sold anymore because our top selling products are in stock." You will not be able to put all your products, or maybe you will be but just 1 of each one. But I don't think that's unfair. What is fair is you and I will have the same amount of storage. And I think if a customer wants to buy that rarely selling thing, he/she really wants it and will not bother to wait, maybe he can't find a design like that anywhere.
3) Personalized Products? Yes, they can't be in stock. (Indeed I have 2 personalized items in stock right now That's another story.) But I don't also think the person who's ordering a personalized product will bother waiting, if he/she is a reasonable guy. I wasn't, of course, talking about personalized products.
4) Dear Stonysmith, I can understand what you're saying, as I'm now in the business. But an average customer doesn't want to understand it. Companies want to grow, companies work for profit. If Shapeways want to go mainstream, and I'm dead sure they want, if they didn't they wouldn't get into 14k gold, they must understand the simple consumer, who cannot tell the difference between a 3d printer and a printer.
5) @FabMeJewelry I can understand your concerns about photography because photos of your products are really great. But I'm sure shapeways will give you positive differentiation, since your photos will likely meet these standards. Do you understand? More or less the standardized photo will be like yours.
6) @StonySmith said "It would also be over $2 million in models to print (assuming WSF, not anything metal), most of which would never sell more than a single copy.". Believe me everybody will not get every product 3d printed ready, because as you say they will have doubts that some products will ever be sold. How many of those shops are active by the way, some stay at hobby level and fade away? And as I said, Shapeways will give limited space in the first place. And if my idea works, maybe Shapeways will like the way things are going and will go unlimited. Maybe it will expand like google, ebay, amazon, and I would like to see them rise like that. They're sophisticated.

An interesting thread. Clearly a "stash my item" facility is NOT the current Shapeways business model. If they look at this, how much extra should they charge you per month for storage space? And how much should they charge for the "professional photography"? I can see the extra costs quickly wiping out any profit for the designer. The cost of maintaining unsold stock is a big killer of "bricks & mortar" shops - just look at the rapid demise of hobby stores in the last decade!

Hobby stores? Maybe it's because different factors, like buying via Internet, less spare cash for luxuries, less proudness of manual work...

Indeed there are many factors. The point is that any kind of "in stock" service incurs cash costs. Somebody has to pay the rent, electricity bill, property taxes, staffing/security wages, etc for the building that contains the storage lockers, on top of paying for the items to be produced. Currently the Shapeways "model" doesn't add any extra costs because they don't hold any inventory. But if they did, who gets to pay for it? It would seem fair for them to put that burden on the Designers, who in turn would have to raise prices via their mark-up to avoid losing money. But since storage is an ongoing cost, any model that doesn't sell quickly will soon cost more than the mark-up!

I used hobby stores as an example because I know folks who run some here, and get to hear their woes about the monthly bills and the way all their cash is tied up in unsold stock gathering dust. Bankruptcy can be triggered by a lack of cash in the bank when the bills come due, even if there is a fortune's worth of unsold stock on hand!

Now, Let's do some math over the figures in the link given by Dear stonysmith. I'm gonna talk about jewelry only to keep the example simple.
2.2 million products printed.
Now assume that a shop owner wants 2/3 of his products stashed and as fabmejewelry revealed a shop owner wants only the performing (active) items to be pre-printed.
2.2 million products were active because they were sold in a year. But some of them were made on demand (personalized). Let's say 1/5 of them were made on demand and subtract them.
Now there is 1.76 million items left.
But do you think these 1.76 million items stay throughout the year and sold out at once? No. Let's say a performing item stays for 2 months. So we divide 1.76 with 6.
Now there's 293.000 items left. We can say that we will see 293.000 items in the shelves all the time. The others will go in and out. When your stash is empty or decreased it will be up to you to Refill it to your limit. Now let's add a % 10 for holiday demands.
Wè have 322.000 items at a time. Little jewelry.
Cufflinks are small, Let's take pendants And others into account and say the shelf can contain 100 pieces, Alright Alright you're suspicious, Let's say 50 then.
There are 13.500 shops. 13500×50=675000
322000/675000=0.47 this means half of our shelves are empty in the current sales volume.
Okay. How many blue rotating shelf containers do we need? 13500/400=33. My father has 10 or 15 of them in his warehouse and they take up a small space. You can put 20 blue rotating containers in my living room with enough space left for dealing with them.
Now this is a fixed cost for a company, it's an investment. If shapeways get into it, it's up to their policy and strategy to reflect these costs on shop owners or not, or divide the costs. If they invest in, they need participation. The shop owners should be willing for preproduction. So a little online survey can help to determine the demand for preproduction. Also if the plan works, there will be more customers, thus more profit, the costs may melt in there. If shapeways gives this service, shop owners will start to pre-print one by one and that means more Guaranteed sales for shapeways itself. Shapeways takes its cash long before the sale, and money has a time value. Why not? Still makes sense, no need for a shelf rent at all.
Jewelry shops can bu used as a pilot, because they're easier to get into and deal with. Choosing jewelry should not offense for example Miniature train designers, because the 2 are not contenders, not in the same ballpark.

Best regards.

I mentioned something similar a few months back. But I don't think it's ever going to happen. Here's why, Shapeways can print products in one day! They don't do it now, because they're not hungry for bushiness yet, but they can. They can, because other service bureaus are already doing this, at a steep price. They will eventually have to do it though at some point here in the future because of having to keep up with the competition.

I'm looking foreword to the day when I can advertise my designs and have them ship at a rate that is comparable to normal products currently shipped from stock. I don't advertise because it doesn't work currently. It doesn't work because hardly anyone wants to wait double or even triple the time to get something they're interested in.

Aside from custom products, as mentioned. Custom products work perfectly in this current business model because people are willing to wait that extra time needed to make a custom product.

As for pictures. That's been discussed too and just recently at least one of the competitors with Shapeways is trying it out.

I see things moving toward a hybrid of traditional retail and 'on-demand' retail. Shapeways could bridge this gap easily - it is currently only an 'on-demand' retailer. The downside of the 'on-demand' system is, obviously, that customers have to wait for their product... so it is not so much 'on-demand' for them as 'hurry up and wait'. Having some limited space for 'available in stock' (tbd and paid for by shopowner) would be a huge boon! Then we could take orders at trade shows, fairs, friends, etc... and they would be shipped out next day. If I tell someone it is 14 days to deliver... the sale is gone. Save for the early adopter who WANTS 3D printing for itself, we are competing with THE MALL where everything can be purchased and taken home immediately. We need a hybrid system that is able to capture a larger share of the market, say as Amazon has done. I believe this is the next step in the evolution of making and selling. Instant anything, like printing, is still a ways off.

This is a really insightful discussion, all!

We have many similar discussions internally, and we empathize with the desire to get your products in the hands of your customers as soon as you can.

We are always working to optimize our processes and create a better user experience, and we hope in the future to only get products to you faster.

Thanks again for your thoughts

Shapeways needs this stock service before late I repeat, Shapeways should start forthwith! If Shapeways set out and make success Hire me Dear Peter, or if Shapeways doesn't start and lose market, again Hire me Dear Peter ))

Ps: I can give all my help to build one.

A problem with stocking parts is that it only makes sense to do it for popular items, so it would disproportionately help the shop owners who are already most successful.

Obviously Shapeways is already not a level playing field -- some models and designers are featured more than others -- but I believe it wants to be one as much as possible while also considering the good of the collective. SW has to curate the most appealing models to put on the front page in order to bring in the most possible customers for everybody. But it has never in my knowledge selectively offered better pricing, more materials, faster service, etc. to some designers, or for some models, or to whoever would be willing to pay extra for them.

Premium services of that kind could be a profit center, but SW doesn't offer them. That's a corporate policy decision, and I think a canny one. I value the egalitarian social environment it creates: the fact that a new shopowner starting today gets the exact same deal that I get. And I think that if that started to change, it could work to slow growth.

I wouldn't be surprised if that plays into their apparent decision not to stock any models.

Keeping stocks can give a bad name for 3D printing , that provide the idea of "ON DEMAND" type of business and empower.
Discrimination it is a bad thing , and can crumble creativity in irreparable ways , it is unproductive at all.

People who want to stock better stock for self , and think about Shapeways like a factory. The more I see "Shapeways like a factory of the future" the more I accept the idea and the freedom it gives.

It is hard for Shapeways to strive too , that it is why we must strive and push it and use it.

"ON DEMAND" part , it is the core of Shapeways , a core that gives us all freedom to create with less risk.

Similar service like Shapeways are http://society6.com/ for 2D printing t-shirts etc ,they don`t stock ... maybe this will clean the idea.

I rather think about next product design , that OCD on this.

Why? I have explained up in the thread my idea that everybody will have the same amount of storage, You may be a blockbuster and I may be a new designer that has just stepped into the world of 3d printing. But you will be able to put only limited amount of your items, You will put your most popular ones, and I will put my "potential" most popular ones. You and I are already not in the same level, stocking has nothing to do with it...
You have a customer portfolio and many 3d printed items.
I have a few 3d printed items and started my shop 2-3 months ago. very soon my package is coming I will put the pictures. If the customers see my models in reality, they may like and start buying or they may not like and I have less sales.
You're in a better position right now.
If the stocking system begins, I will put my best models into the stash. And you will put your most popular ones. But I don't see a difference.
What makes difference? Having your 3d model printed once makes the difference, because the customer looks at a real product.
As mighty Tyrion Lannister puts it "if you seek justice, you have come to the wrong place." But again, it has nothing to with stocking.

Why? In this way "normal" customers have no reason to buy from Shapeways other than custom items. So we "nerds" as UniverseBecoming put it will continue to flatter each other forever in this Bohemian network. Looking at the "it has arrived" threads "ohh what a great model! how awesome!.....But who will wear it? Who will give the real value that your hard-crafted model has? When an artist loses connection with the common people, he/she enters in a loop, Where there is no real feedback. You think you're making hell of a ring, or a cufflink, but thay maybe annoying to put on. You're so blinded to see the inability, because you don't wanna see, you gave so much time, and those around you, they flatter you that's all. Why am I telling these, because I assume that you put art in front of money.

But for example I want to make money. And I must assure I take great pleasure 3d modeling, and love working. But love isn't enough. I have to make money to continue.

Aaaand the neverending "how to marketing" threads and suggestions and blogs... I say without "stocking" forget about marketing. Because you don't need the pull "nerds" to Shapeways, because "the nerds" had already probably found their way here.

But it has dawn on me right now why Shapeways doesn't stock.... I think they don't feel capable of meeting such a demand of extra sales to the normal customers...

Maybe their thing is to pull money out of us "nerds". That explains why many of you pay more to your 3d models than you get from your sales.
I can't speak of it because, my shop didn't start strictly. Soon I will be able to tell my experience.

And one more thing:
We've already talked about low traffic of Shapeways. Our friends told they have 10x sales on Etsy. So we may want to sell outside of Shapeways.
For example I'm living in Japan, a customer from Germany bought my item outside of Shapeways. Shapeways ship it to Japan from Netherlands, I pay tax on customs and get the package, then I ship it to Germany. Does it make sense? All these problems, double shipping, time losing, extra expenses could be solved with just one simple step....STOCKING.

They don't need to stock, I think they can do those t-shirts in minutes. When they can do it in minutes, why should they stock? Can shapeways produce a cast jewelry in minutes?

Best regards.

I`m not a nerd. And I never been an nerd. And I am looking good ... I am literally a customer and designer in same blood and flesh. I have lived in life condition you will not endure , that things you only see in drama movies ...

I make a dream come true and I will push even when everybody will quit doing it.

Maybe a middle option can be done , like 3 item stock option , where the designer pays full price of the production. Like 3 pieces per product.

But the main problem it is the high quantity of designs printed daily by Shapeways!!!! And that combined with stock option it is very hard to solve.

So maybe Shapeways give us a light about this ?

But I end with an old entrepreneur quote "You must invest money in order to make money!"

Shapeways it is the same for clients and designers , the way you buy , your clients buy. Same thing.

What Shapeways can do in short time , I guess they can make contact with more casting houses and lower the time to make a product ... but that involves costs ... involves big numbers ...

If the scope of Shapeways was to milk designers of money , then they did not promote designers on E-MAILS of ALL SHAPEWAYS USERS. So we better not see it with "dark side" in mid.

Hi Everyone,

Great dialogue. Hopefully I can help answer some questions:

First of all, Thank you @Bathsheba for chiming in here. As usual, you are spot on.
We value everyone's equal access to the tools you need to achieve your dreams, no matter the amount of cc's we print for you each year (okay, now that was "nerdy"). It's amazing to watch the rise of such unique entrepreneurs in a landscape meant to give everyone a chance. Many of our most successful products have actually been from young designers, who identified a niche and really went after it, both on and offline. It's nice to hear that you've always felt that way, Bathsheba

@numarul7 - You have the right idea. The notion behind 3DP is to print on demand, making it possible to customize every product. If you think about how long it would take to make each lovely object you each print for yourselves and customers as a one off, it is relatively quick.

Also this is classic:
High fives all around.
____

To be blunt, we have goals to strive in this space. We have lowered nearly every lead time this year and plan to keep that trend up, getting products to you and your customers as fast as possible.

I can't help but wonder, how fast would be fast enough? Say for example, we could print all materials and ship within a week, do you think that would relieve this burden? Or has the two-day prime shipping ruined our expectations for delivery wait? Just curious
___

@MayCrown - You have a interesting points in your post and I think this will shine some light on where we're coming from.
- Our #1 issue would be real estate. If all 20,000 Shop Owners had a square foot of stock space it would take up our entire factory in Queens, floor to ceiling. The average price per sq. ft in New York is $507, $1,482 in Manhattan (according to Zillow). It is physically not possible for us to offer this at this time.
- in theory, we all started at the same point someday, from the bottom with little capital to get going. 70% of Shop Owners opened their shop using less than $100 and 90% did it with less than $1,000. It may take some time, but we're all here to support you on your design journey and our collective ability to help grow your business. We see incredible growth in new Shop Owners all the time- you can be one of them!

- This is a step we always look to avoid, might I ask why you had the product shipped to you first? We ship direct to Germany
This is all public information so I'm happy to share, we had 1.4 Million Unique Visits during the month of August, our biggest month of year and I believe potentially ever. We are growing rapidly and we work hard across all the teams at Shapeways, every day to drive more visits to your shops. The best thing you can do here is to make it easy for us to show you off:
~ Take Great Photos. It's impossible to stress this enough. Products that sell, sell 10x more when there is a photo of the model
~ Tag your products well so we can find them when we look for products to feature, which we do constantly, every day.
~ Prototype your designs so customers have a great experience (and don't get a rejection)
~ Share your work on social media
~ Tell us your story! Community@Shapeways.com is always looking for great community stories to tell on our blog, and we often pluck them from here and our social platforms.
I'd like to remind us all that in terms of traffic, the best thing you can do to increase yours is to build your brand. You can do this by nurturing your audiences on multiple online platforms. Ask, are there other people talking about this or who would appreciate this elsewhere? Then search for forums, facebook groups, boards, tweets, Instagrams or LinkedIn groups to join using your product tag words. We've seen the greatest growth in referral traffic and revenue lately from the top social platforms. People are hungry for your work, they just haven't discovered it yet. We can all help.
To give context, here are the traffic numbers for the leading social platforms. This is traffic we can each capture pieces of.
(I can largely only see US stats on Quantcast, my apologies, the #'s should still provide scope):
> Facebook.com: 140M Monthly Uniques in the US Alone
> Twitter.com: 87.5M Monthly Uniques in the US Alone
> Pinterest.com: 61M Monthly Uniques in the US Alone
> Instagram.com: 10.7M Monthly Uniques in the US Alone
> LinkedIn.com: 71M in the US, 190M in the world

Anyway, long winded but in an effort to be helpful. I digress. We respect your wishes, but I want to manage your expectations and let you know that stocking is not something we plan to incorporate in the near future. Should we, change our minds however, you'll be the first to know.

Best,
Savannah

@SavIsSavvy

That will be ideal!

Double fives for traffic info!

It will be good that traffic info to be shown on the blog so people don`t get so "dark side" making what it is already hard , harder due wrong emotions.

@numarul7 - Thanks! Really appreciate the suggestions, and great idea- we should share this all on the blog, I have some fun stuff planned for the countdown to holiday, so apologies in advance for the repeat in info

I cannot even faintly outline a timeline for when we could ship all materials in a week, but I do know as we bring them all down as we can, that becomes more and more a real possibility. It's good to know that this could achieve many goals at one time too, as we prioritize.

I really appreciate the discussion, all!

Cheers,
Savannah

I have never been a nerd either. I call us "nerds" to emphazise the point, inspired by other people saying that this is a place full of nerds. In reality, this is a place full of intellectuals and artists.

I don't think you need that much space and all those shopowners will stock, and the shop owners who stock will fully use their stocking right. Look at you website, do everybody print their designs? There are a lot of renders and symbolic photos.I've written that up in my thread. There can be a pilot work. I think the main difficulty for shapeways would be to meet the skyrocketing sales from common users.

I was talking about the situation where we sell our products on outside of Shapeways because we cannot stock and where we find more audience. We have to double-ship. If shapeways could stock, then we would only focus on Shapeways website, not try to sell outside of Shapeways, who has a great website.

It would be very nice of you, if you could share with us what percent of 1.4 million unique turns to sales.