Porcelain Price Change

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by bgeorgakas, Mar 9, 2017.

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  1. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Well it was worth a shot. I thought that maybe, just maybe things would go dormant in the pricing columns so I could reference the old markup values before correcting them and reactivating things for sale. But ignoring the the whole issue about doing this manually or with the cvs files, am I correct that the pricing changes were being implemented practically at the same time as the announcement? Not on Monday but today?

    This means there was no adequate warning to download the appropriate files to archive the old markup values in a reference document. I guess its my fault for not archiving these files myself every week or after every editing change on the off chance that Shapeways could change things at a moment's notice, and somehow also set new prices in the thousands of dollars for some porcelain models, meaning my markup values were set to zero.
     
  2. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Can't you search the Marketplace page using <Bathsheba> as the search term and then filter products based on porcelain? Granted it would only give products that are public and available for sale but it's a start.

    Or do a Google search:
    Durable porcelain "Bathsheba Sculpture" site:www.shapeways.com/product/

    I think the Google approach needs one of the porcelain options to be the default material so maybe not so great. Also needs the item to be public and for sale.
     
  3. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Since the whole pricing change thing seems to be limited by spreadsheet issues an idea came to me last night in a dream for how production price increases might be implemented to retain the previous markup in any material when a production price increase must happen.

    First of all let's consider a production price reduction. This is a rare bird indeed but has happened in the past. In this case the (new final price) = (old final price) = (new production price) + (new markup). This happens because as production price decreases the markup value increases by the same amount. So maybe not as great as keeping the markup constant, at least the markup value is not reduced and certainly can't drop to a zero value. A shop owner has some breathing room to drop prices to reflect the new lowered production price if they want, but they don't have to do this.

    But a production price increase can drop the markup value to zero. This is very bad if a shop owner does not become aware of the change and can lose revenue if there are any new sales for items with a zero value markup. So here's a potential work around that Shapeways might be able to implement during the price update to retain the original markup value. Do the update as a two step process - one followed by the other.

    First update the new increased production price but also add to it the markup value from the markup column. In other words create an inflated new production price with the markup value. This causes the final price to be inflated but the process causes the markup column to also reset to a zero value.
    (new inflated production price) = (new production price) + (original markup)

    Secondly immediately perform the other step which is basically a price reduction change. This time update the new inflated production price with the new actual production price which is obviously lower than the inflated value. The difference between the inflated production price and the actual production price appears in the markup column and it should be the old value that existed before the process started.

    I think this should work if you do it properly. It basically leverages the existing methodologies you use to change prices with only a slight, and theoretically simple modification. The servers will need to work twice as hard, but hey, computers don't complain.
     
  4. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    Strong and flexible ball... Strike One!
    Porcelain ball... Strike TWO!!!
    OMG! Umpire ready... ,__(#)_/'

    Stored or not, the markup is (explicitly or implicitly) known. For the "not stored" case just compute old price (just like when doing an order and paying markups, right? unless it is really stored), substract, compute new production cost and add back.

    That never works for euros. So part of the buyers always get it "wrong". Maybe not a big market, so not important (but imagine if it is a self fulfilling prophecy, ugly prices hurting the market size).
     
  5. draw
    draw Well-Known Member
    Is this still happening? Is there any way to push the cost increase into a product to get it done? I've calculated the expected new prices on a few ceramic products and added the increase in price to the markups, saved, and the old production price remains.

    I'm using this equation to prep the new product prices. Does it look right?
    (1.3($oldproduction -$9))+$15+$designermarkup

    Example. $21 dollar final old price item including a $1 markup

    new ceramic price = (1.3($20-$9))+$15+$1 = $30.30
     
  6. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
  7. draw
    draw Well-Known Member
    Maybe they meant by next Monday?
     
  8. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
  9. draw
    draw Well-Known Member
    This is cool. Shapeways must think that my markups were too low. :p

    big markup.jpg
     
  10. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    As of today I seem to have three types of porcelain price updates:

    1. No price increase. Original mark-ups still there.
    2. Correct price increase(?). Mark-ups dropped to zero because I do low mark-ups.
    3. Crazy high price increases in thousands of dollars. Mark-ups also dropped to zero.

    I don't see the case of the previous post in my library. I assume that happened because there was a crazy high price increase that created a crazy high final price. Then the crazy price increase was fixed but the crazy increase was dumped into the mark-up because of your scheme that tries to keep final price constant. Anyone care to provide an update on when things will be normal again?
     
  11. truevox
    truevox Member
    I just want to add my voice to the chorus of dismay. I have been pursuing a personal business specializing in your porcelain pieces for the last two years. This is about enough to get me to invest in a kiln, sadly.

    Please reconsider this price increase. This is ALREADY a premium item. This price increase has just pushed my margins beyond what they can take, sadly.

    That said, if there is no way to undo it, then so be it — this was nice while it lasted, but there are other options as said above, and I do understand the need for profitability.
     
  12. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Still wondering what the plan/schedule is for updating/correcting production prices on porcelain items. Can't do much else until that happens other than to have those items toggled off and not for sale.
     
  13. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
    Hello Shapeways?

    We need to not have items left in a bugged state with nonsensical prices -- please roll them all back if you aren't ready to do this update properly.

    I see this has been done with my Enneper lamp item, but you have to see it's no good to just fix items piecemeal by hand.
     
  14. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
     
  15. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    I just had a Shapeways advert show up on a web page advertising a porcelain cup for around $72 as I recall. Then I found the cup on the site for $95 which seems to be about right for the new porcelain pricing. That means not only are porcelain prices somewhat mucked up on the site but probably also extending out to your advertising efforts.
     
  16. anthonyraphaelpetrone
    anthonyraphaelpetrone Active Member
    Shapeways really does know how to make it very hard to make and sell their innovative porcelain. It's almost as if they want it to be so expensive people can't even afford it. Along with the significant price hike it even looks like the the ship time increased..?

    Plus many months ago they mentioned getting some unglazed samples out to us because they wanted to maybe offer that option and that quietly died and never happened as well.
     
  17. Vortical
    Vortical Well-Known Member
    Please find a way to offer porcelain again.

    I'd pay more to be able to produce prototypes of my porcelain oil lamp bodies.

    Many thanks for the care and concern that went into producing my three orders to date. You made a dream of twenty years come true.

    I have even better dreams now...
     
  18. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
    Hang tough -- better stuff is out there. Srsly when you get a look at Boston Ceramics' product you'll stop missing SW's porcelain. (I can say this here because Shapeways itself linked to them in the porcelain-discontinuing announcement.)
     
  19. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    It's not unlikely that Shapeways will be offering ceramics again in the future, even if they need to do it through a production partner or partners. I didn't completely remove any porcelain designs from my shop. After I recovered products with damaged variant structures, and sanitized the descriptions, I set them to the new natural strong and flexible processed versatile plastic options for the time being. Not that the price is right for any sales but it will make things easier to add ceramic options later if the opportunity arises.

    Speaking of which, this is my new shop section directory. Sometimes I crack myself up.

    shop sections.jpg
     
  20. Bathsheba
    Bathsheba Well-Known Member
    he he yeah

    Yeah, I agree it could happen. It all depends if a scalable player emerges. Boston Ceramics' previous incarnation was Figulo, which was Shapeways' back end for ceramics when they first had it, before porcelain. There was nothing wrong with it that I know of, that arrangement ended because Figulo got bought by a bigger player which then proceeded to starve it out. Now it's reemerged, I don't see any reason it and Shapeways couldn't partner again if they like, or heck someone else could come along.

    Just I don't see it coming very soon, since plainly SW is in a housecleaning mode right now.
     
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