New to this. We make handcrafted wood & acrylic pens and scroll-sawed signs. We have the ability to personalize by engraving. How successful do you think the engraving aspect will be when we'll have to take orders and ship the final product back to the customer? Are customers willing to place orders or do we need to find a way to take our computer and engraver to the craft shows?
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Innovations Studio
Monday, April 6, 2009 10:40 pm EDT
Welcome! I don't think you'll have a problem taking orders and shipping later. I never have - people are more than willing to prepay. Be sure to include delivery costs on this "SPECIAL ORDER". I also include a "Special Order" charge which covers the 'one of a kind' design that it becomes when you personalize. A lot of buyers like the idea that they don't have to carry something around with them, especially people traveling with tours. Although, I'd suggest that even if you don't do the whole process in your booth, demonstration of some part of it is a GREAT way to advertise and stimulates interest. I'm an illustrative painter of signs, quips and quotes and often have sign 'blanks' in the booth for customers to choose from and then paint and finish overnight for local pick up or I ship later, but that decision is made before the order is completed and includes shipping and handling. Good luck to you! Kathleen
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Bear Paw Sticks & Staffs
Tuesday, April 7, 2009 03:47 pm EDT
We take special orders on our wizard staffs, and have a form I created in Excel for such. The customer can specify a staff, a finial, and special adornments to be added. Since all special orders are packaged by me and shipped by Fedex ground, we add $20 for shipping & handling. This sounds high, but most of these staffs are 5-6 feet long with glass tops and require special packaging and additional shipping fees. Also, both you and your customer can sign the special order form to insure you both understand exactly what is being ordered, and how & when it is to be shipped. And don't forget that demon sales tax! In some states (Louisiana is one) sales tax must be charged on both the product and the shipping & handling. Also, be sure to download postage/shipping charts for the size/deminsions of the packages you are most likely to ship. Some shippers will only ship packages of certain sizes/deminsions. Others will ship outsized packages for an additional charge. If you're not on top of this, you can lose money fast. Be aware!
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Robinson's Cowboy Concessions
Saturday, August 8, 2009 08:28 pm EDT
Lagrizzly, your process sounds almost exactly like ours. Our products are a bit bulky (we make ornamental, wooden solar lights) but almost every show has someone wanting them ordered and shipped. How we handle the variable in the weight is to hold processing the credit card until we can give them a price for shipping the item and then we process the charges all at once. We have not yet had anyone decide they did not want an item due to shipping costs. Even if they did, we would just add them back into our inventory. I figure if one person liked the design...someone else will too.
