Store-Front???

Lets make a store front for HM!

-Konstantin:

Hey Hackmanhattan,

--I think we should create a web storefront for selling the kits we design, like Guan's joule-thief or the led board from the ping pong board. The person who funded the parts and boards should get their investment back from the sales and the rest could be sent to the space. Or the designer could be compensated somehow.

--We should create some sort of committee that is in charge of setting up the store and overseeing it. Not in the sense of customer service, but rather make sure everything is working.

--We should make a little space somewhere where we can keep the individual kits before we send them out to amazon or our customers.

-Crystal:

It would be nice to put up tees and maybe some 3D printed souvenirs as well. But that means someone has to do order fulfillment -- like being available to ship things at least 2-3 times a week if we actually sell anything :-) Who's going to be shop manager? Or does everyone take responsibility for posting & shipping their own products?

One option is to have individuals pay the materials costs, set up items for sale, and set a retail price; then we should figure out some % that HM gets to cover site overhead and to take as profit toward the general fund for equipment, shared materials, etc. If we have an e-commerce CMS that allows for multiple users to easily post things in a standard format and receive personal emails for customer questions or returns then everyone can handle their own items. Sort of a Hack Manhattan Etsy!

It would be perfect for showcasing things that people could drop into the space and pick up or buy for workshops as well. Nice if we can do it since Adafruit doesn't allow pickups, and they're the only other locals aside from the basics at Radio Shack! Needs some working out but I think we should do it if enough people will post products. And if it works with our non-profit status.

-Jordan:

Amazon has good options for outsourcing fulfillment. Anyone who has Amazon prime then gets free 2 day shipping on HM items or free for anyone if the item is over $25. We can either make or own store front that is powered by Amazon behind the scenes, or just sell directly on Amazon's pages (not as sexy as having our own CMS etc, but it's a really easy way to get started and prototype the demand for our products). I think doing the fulfillment ourselves has a big potential to create unhappy customers, and it would also be a significant time and management commitment.

[1]

Fulfillment by Amazon requires their professional account, which is $40/month.<-(Guan)

We could also look at using Inmojo, where "You can sell anything that falls under our definition of Open Source Hardware." They charge 3.5% of the pre-shipping cost though say they offer deals to hackerspaces. They take care of all the CMS and billing, and then we'd take care of the fulfillment.

[2]