Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Andrewsimonthomas, May 9, 2017.

  1. BoMonroe
    BoMonroe Well-Known Member
    Well, it is officially the week of the 22nd... an update on when the repricing takes effect would be welcome...
     
  2. Or if anything do what someone else said before. In the materials page create a "Fake" Frosted Detailed, that shows the upcoming price. That way we can test different orientations, sprues, etc.... with the new price before the change.
     
  3. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    We'll have more in formation in the next few hours :)
     
  4. Just add a print to the Envisiontec printers of RCP30 or RC90. And most modelers will forget about Projet and VisiJet Crystal (FUD/FED). For example Envisiontec Aureus (not a very accurate ET printer) better than the Projet 3600 with XHD Mode for any modelers. Let me choose from the best.
     
  5. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    Plan is to live on Wednesday.
    Will keep you all posted.
     
  6. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    https://www.shapeways.com/materials/high-definition-acrylate
    is printed on our Envisiontec machines ;)
     
  7. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Would it be a good idea to avoid adding models, setting prices, etc. at any particular times when these pricing changes ripple through the system???
     
  8. AlanHudson
    AlanHudson Shapeways Employee Dev Team
    It shouldn't matter. All the old models have been back processed and all new models are calculating the new prices on upload. So feel free to upload and change whatever. We're completing our final quality and releases tasks and then we'll throw the switches.

     
  9. Derek66
    Derek66 Active Member
    I've been scanning through responses on this forum and noted at least one from Maurice of RailNscale. His shop sets the gold standard for me for what a Shapeways shop should/could look like. Please tell me that you consulted with RailNscale before launching on this pricing project.
    Can you please give a list of the top earning shop owners that you are consulting with so that I can at least have some confidence that you are aware of the consequences of what you are doing.
     
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  10. Derek66
    Derek66 Active Member
    ....oh and by the way, I come up as a "new member" BUT I have been running a Shapeways shop for several years now and consult with my customers all the time. Somehow though Shapeways still like to refer to me as a "new member"

    Derek, Classic Airships
     
  11. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    That forum text is based in how many posts you have written.
     
  12. railNscale
    railNscale Well-Known Member
    Derek, thank you for your kind words. They are highly appreciated.

    We were not consulted by Shapeways regarding this 'pricing project'. We did receive a csv with all the new prices for our FUD-products a day before the official announcement on the forum. Which gives the impression that Shapeways has reviewed several shops to see what the effects are. We asked a lot of questions (and got answers) and gave our opinion a day before the official announcement, but we were not actively consulted by Shapeways. But as we understand the new pricing is not based on certain shops, but on all the sold FD-products in 2016.

    Joris & Maurice
     
    MitchellJetten likes this.
  13. HOLDEN8702
    HOLDEN8702 Well-Known Member
    Maurice (RailNScale) said:

    "We were not consulted by Shapeways regarding this 'pricing project'...."

    And the worse thing, in my opinion, is that shapeways hasn't done anything to "inform" (WARN is a better word to use) our good Customers about new pricing and repercusions of all this mess.

    I did a huge informative campaign to my Customers a week ago, but so many Good People will find the "Awesome News" when at least the 80% of my work was removed from my shops as unaffordable.

    Customers don't usually read these forums. Only retarded designers like me are interested in the shit shapeways may share.
     
  14. BoMonroe
    BoMonroe Well-Known Member
    It would be nice if this transistion weren't completely abrupt (i.e. let us opt into new pricing structure for existing products), but If this is what it takes to get us to orientation control, I'm all for it.
     
  15. NimlothCQ
    NimlothCQ Well-Known Member
    Indeed, we will be following up with user-set orientation in the very near future after the pricing update :)
     
    BoMonroe likes this.
  16. ETS35
    ETS35 Well-Known Member
    Actually, I'd say the pricing update is not finished until the user-set orientation has become active. Orientation will now have heavy consequences for prices. The period between these two changes may well be a problem...... I hope it won't take long.
     
    Keystone_Details likes this.
  17. railNscale
    railNscale Well-Known Member
    As mentioned before, RAILNSCALE was not consulted, however we have given our opinion about the proposed pricing strategy.

    Our opinion is that SW should not simply recalculate retail prices by keeping the mark-ups the same. The way you sell products (or at least miniatures) is not by adding a fixed margin to your design and hope your products will sell. You have to think in customer prices.
    Therefore SW should do the same as they do with the cast metal repricing:

    "If the price of your model is going down and it is for sale in the marketplace, the retail price will not change. Instead, the reduction in price will be used to increase your markup. From there, you can determine if you would like to make more on each sale or offer more competitive pricing.

    If the price of your model is going up, your price to shoppers will increase correspondingly and your markup will remain the same."

    By this you can adjust your new price setting in all ease. This is important because retail price setting is a sensitive thing. Customers do typically not like if they discover that suddenly products become a lot cheaper.

    Appearently SW thinks that many shop owners are not clever (or to lazy) and forget to alter/lower the prices if possible. It seems that SW is thinking that lowering prices equals more sales. Although lower prices would be welcomed by everyone, I do not believe that 3D printed miniatures are sold because they have a competitive price setting. No our miniatures are sold by customers because they want a specific design or are looking for better detailing. As FUD/FXD parts normally need to be post processed by the customer you will not attract the 'average customer'.

    Given the fact that we sell quite some miniature car models that need to be cleaned and painted by the customers for a price twice to over ten times more expensive than mass produced injection moulded car models that do not need any post processing proofs this. You can by coloured 1/160 car models for less than 1 euro! No way SW or RAILNSCALE will compete with those products.

    This means that there is another mechanism that makes people by 3D printed models. These Unique Selling Points are:
    - unique designs
    - high degree of details
    - specialized products

    SW should in our opinion try to keep these USPs on a high level. This means that SW should provide a proper platform that can be trusted by the designers. It would be a lot better if SW would provide a more consistent printing quality that matches with the higher price setting.
    We need: consistency in print orientation. SW should not promote (via pricing mechanism) to choose the wrong print orientation. SW should provide better information on how to clean and post process FUD/FXD. In other words: we want more value. FXD for example often does not meet the customer's expectation due to poor printing orientation and horrible packaging. Many of our customers know that SW is often not delivering the quality level they were used.

    SW should not promote to add sprues everywhere to lower prices. Sprues are sometimes handy, but often adding sprues is a source of rejections and broken items.

    SW should not suddenly change pricings without informing the shop owners. SW should promote that shop owners do the best job. The sudden drastic price changes does not allow the shop owners to keep their shops properly. It is rather time consuming to rework your shop.

    That SW is not even able to implement the price change as they themselves have defined is outrageous and displays a great lack of professionalism.

    It look likes SW has a big pricing problem and anticipates that most shop owners do not care. By this SW hopes that their pricing structure becomes more sound and that somewhat lower prices will help selling more. That is a big mistake.

    If you want to sell more you have to invest in your shop owners by providing them tools (tips, suggestions, easy-to-maintain-your-shop-tools, proper information). By this you create a bond. By this shop owners will play the role of an ambassador.

    In all honesty, the current pricing changes fit in the long line of ignorant modifications, which wll not help us (RAILNSCALE) to promote SW to forums. Unfortunately we have to accept that SW is that flip-flop company that happens to run some nice 3D printers.

    SW please invest in your designers, stop changing stuff without properly testing, become reliable, add a multi-language platform and stop your rejection-methods. Soon people will choose alternatives. SW should be on the forefront to promote the USPs of 3D printing.

    Kind regards,
    Maurice
     
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  18. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    I did not notice that they were treating the price changes differently for frosted and cast metals, at least in the case of production price dropping. Maybe one of those notices is in error? I can't imagine that with price changes happening in the same week that they would be treating these materials differently. On the other hand the left hand may not know what the right hand is trying to do.
     
  19. railNscale
    railNscale Well-Known Member
    Hello,

    Well, we've asked SW and they confirmed they do the price change deliberately different between FUD and casting metals.
    They reason that FUD parts are to highly priced compared to other scale miniatures in other shops and that the Jewelry sector at SW have competitive prices but struggle to get a proper margin.

    To me this sounds as twice the same. If FUD designers would not have a margin problem, they could lower prices....

    As mentioned before: I do not believe that 3D printed miniatures cannot be compared to injection moulded ready-to-use miniatures. I have no idea how 3D printed jewelry relates to 'real' jewelry.

    Regards,
    Maurice
     
  20. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    As @railNscale noted, we deliberately decided to implement how pricing changes different based on what shopowners have as us and what they believe are most important for their customers.

    Maurice raises wonderful points (more on this in a moment) that we take seriously, but as a whole we've observed that lower prices are more important to shoppers who purchase FUD whereas better margins are more important for jewelry based shopowners. We've simply opted to do what was most popular and most important for those actively involved in these categories.

    We totally understand that this won't make everyone happy but we hope we've made it easy to make the change quickly and easily with the CSV tool (which I might add we're upgrading so you can see the price differences, material families and now include variants) We have a very large community so we need to what works the best for as many of you as possible.

    with regards to other suggestions, these are all things that we are actively working on (consistent user set orientation, tips, education, rejections etc) and want to share with you soon!