Beyond Brainstorming

The World Is Not Flat Enough

Since we started selling ThinkCube in June, I have received a ton of email from people all over the world wanting to know how they can buy a Cube. We originally decided to keep it simple in our first year of business and only sell in the US. But with all of the demand, I thought I would test the waters and experiment with a few international orders.

So far it hasn’t gone well. Here’s what I now know:

1) UPS international shipping = hidden fees.
For a recent order to Canada, the UPS online system said it would cost $14 to ship via ground service. But 2 weeks later I received an invoice for $10 in duties and $30 in “Entry Prep” fees. I expected the duties (though I had no way to estimate them in advance), but what the heck is an entry prep fee? I called UPS and the agent didn’t know either. We lost $30-$40 on this order, depending on whether or not you count the duties.

2) Damage during international shipping = money lost.
An international customer recently received a ThinkCube that was damaged in transit (shipped via UPS). I started a claim to recover the cost of the original shipment, but chances are we won’t get any money back and we still have to foot the bill to send the customer a new Cube. We lost around $150 on the order.

3) USPS international shipping = unreliable service.
Come on, USPS, need I say more? For any international readers, the United States Postal Service is notorious for loosing international packages. If your international package does show up, it will almost certainly be late and in rough shape. This again means lost money and unhappy customers.

4) International shipping = time lost.
On each international order I spend 20 extra minutes online collecting customer info, estimating shipping, invoicing; 10 extra minutes carefully packaging for the long journey; 20 extra minutes completing various customs forms. That’s close to 1 extra hour of my time. I work for free these days, but hey, my time is still worth something.

As of this morning, we were still undecided on how to proceed regarding international sales. Compiling this list has made me realize that all of our customers are too important to let them down with unreliable, costly, and overall poor service. If we can’t offer the same quality of service internationally, why offer the service at all? Who does that benefit?

If you know someone who has navigated these waters successfully, send them my way!

 

Selling on Amazon

The headline of Amazon’s seller’s page reads, “Sell Your Stuff and make money – it’s that easy.” Is it really?

For a number of reasons, we wanted to list ThinkCube on Amazon. After countless hours of digging through Amazon’s site and numerous unanswered emails, I found only 2 selling options for self-publishers… us little guys.

Option 1: Sell as the publisher (they process the sale, pack it, and ship it) for a fee of 55% of every single sale. FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT. You don’t have to be a genius to see that’s not a fair deal. Wanna bet publishers like Random House and Penguin don’t pay 55%?

Option 2: Sell with a ProMerchant Account (they process the sale, you pack it and ship it). Amazon allows you to create a new product page for your new product, but forces you to sell as if you were a reseller, under the “Used & New” category. The fee structure is almost fair at about 15% per sale for our type of product. But when forced to sell as if you’re a reseller, you loose the customer confidence and credibility you went to Amazon looking for in the first place.

Sure, we could jack up our price, pass the cost on to you, and pay Amazon their 55%, but that’s not how we operate. So instead we’ve hired experts to design our own shopping cart and we plan on processing our own orders. We may experiment with Option 2 as a supplementary venue for sale, but we hope we can make it on our own. It might not be easy, but nothing ever is when you’re a little guy.