An idea for small-run and custom light makers...

[OddOne]

Note to the mods: I have NO Idea if this is the best locale for this, hehehe, so move as deemed necessary. And if it's not kosher feel free to fry it.


I'm preparing to jump into making and selling my own light designs, and had an idea...

Right now there are a bunch of REALLY talented light makers here, making some of the most amazing lights I've seen. And many don't have any avenue for selling their stuff aside from basic direct person-to-person. I am thus wondering if there'd be any benefit to creating a larger online shop for folks that don't have their own e-commerce systems in place to market their goodies to all interested comers. That way I could sell my stuff, they could sell theirs, etc. from a single location that would basically be a CPFer's dream.

Hell, we could work CPF into it and throw an annual fundraiser through it, if Sasha approves of course.

I'm envisioning setting up a system wherein light makers can list their goods for sale and define a price, and I do all the gruntwork for the site in exchange for a small fraction of the asking price. Like eBay's listing fee only less insanely managed. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif Maybe for a bit more of the selling price I'd even handle the purchase end of the equation and fire the $ for a purchase to the seller via PayPal or whatever, thus eliminating the need to set up for a merchant account, etc. (Of course any of this would involve a reselling contract to protect all involved parties.)

Is there any interest in building a huge online fleamarket of light builders? If so, any thoughts on how'd it best be done?

oO

 

[Leeoniya]

i think it's a good idea, i've been meaning to do some designs myself and been doign research. i have access to CNC machines and i'm not afraid to use them. I do need to find a source for materials. McMaster seems to be great, Digikey and Jameco are also good. Looking for some good places to get Sapphire glass and solid silver rods for heatsinks, also need to find a good place for anodizing work.

I'm thinking of actually taking almost entirely custom machining orders as well from DXF or DWG profile paths or dimensioned drawings..also 3D models of course, solidworks or Inventor, Autocad. I think there would be a good amount of interest in that kind of work.

I'd be really interested in a fleamarket. It sort of makes everything uniform and centrally managed instead of having separate shops like Dat2Zip and Lambda's, also posting of specs and such and the ability to send files for custom design and machining.

you may have a hard time convincing well established Dat2Zip, but lambda doesnt have anything like that AFAIK.

i just read your article on the Zetex 310 circuits, hilarious. "hardcore psychoes" are we?

who's the hardcore psycho now?

hehe.

 

[OddOne]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

Oh if only you knew just how psycho I really am, muahahahaha...

And my idea wouldn't be of any rea; use to the established online shops like Dat2Zip's, although nothing says we can't do a link-exchange type thing to one another.


Lemme know if you're wanting to try your service idea out on real-world stuff, as I have TONS of designs, many of them already drafted out to DWG/DXF, that I'd love to have made.

oO

 

[paulr]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

Wayne resells a fair amount of modder stuff, and opening your own web store is pretty easy these days (Yahoo Stores, etc).

 

[Leeoniya]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

true, but it's nice to have one storefront for everything. and not have a million accounts with different e-commerce sites.

also, a good ecommerce site updates dynamically from databases through asp or php.

wayne's site had a lot to offer but the design is very minimalistic. I would love high-res images of things, as well as thumbnails, or at least image placeholders for catagories and products (eg: have blue luxeons where blue is being sold, without having a generic pic for everything and having to read through a giant list of descriptions, also have more subcatagories, like lenses, retaining rings, heatsinks, reflectors, optics...etc.). among a few other things.

i know he's busy, but the site definitely needs a front-end overhaul.

and not everyone has enough product to warrant an entire ecommerce site, as well as merchant accounts with CC companies. it is a very convenient thing to go to one person and tell him to add your product to the database from which the site updates every night.

it might be easy, but it's overkill for providing one service or one product. i'm going to set one up for my computer business, but not for my hobbies.

oddone, drop me an email or PM with info on what u'd like done.

thanks,
Leon

 

[wasBlinded]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

redundant

 

[wasBlinded]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

I think I saw a note somewhere that Wayne is moving the Sandwich Shoppe to some new digs. Don't know if that means a wholesale interface change or not, but I think we'll see soon.

 

[voodoogreg]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

I like the idea. it would be benifical to any light maker no matter what size. I came across the CR2 ion because the SS didn't have pic's for thing's i needed to actually "view" about building a FF2. As a newbie when it comes to sammies, body's
etc, i really couldn't find pic's or enough info for me to feel comfortable just buying from a "see me" parts list

I think it's a good idea, will need a good busines plan, but not redundent at all.VDG

 

[idleprocess]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

[ QUOTE ]
Leeoniya said:
true, but it's nice to have one storefront for everything. and not have a million accounts with different e-commerce sites.

also, a good ecommerce site updates dynamically from databases through asp or php.

wayne's site had a lot to offer but the design is very minimalistic. I would love high-res images of things, as well as thumbnails, or at least image placeholders for catagories and products (eg: have blue luxeons where blue is being sold, without having a generic pic for everything and having to read through a giant list of descriptions, also have more subcatagories, like lenses, retaining rings, heatsinks, reflectors, optics...etc.). among a few other things.

i know he's busy, but the site definitely needs a front-end overhaul.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Sanwich Shoppe uses OScommerce - an open-source(ish) eStore app. It's used all over the internet with varying degrees of success. As far as I know, OSCommerce is PHP-based and builds pages from a database.

Many webhosting companies feature it - run a script and it's ready to go... so long as you maintain it and edit the content regularly.

As for the appearance... that's a subjective, contentious issue. I've mentioned appearance/functionality issues to some of the modders/manufacturers around here in private and haven't gotten anything positive in response.

 

[OddOne]

Re: An idea for small-run and custom light makers.

More detail on what I'd love to do:

Yes, there'd be a database backend, and I am strongly considering rolling my own frontend for it. (I can sling PHP like nobody's business, hehehe... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) I'd like to add the ability to have auctions, raffles, and individual-user classifieds (for person-to-person sales) as part of the system along with the usual e-commerce fare. The database would tend to all the stuff and folks wanting to make use of the system would essentially be paying for my efforts to code and maintain the data handling and cover bandwidth costs. I could also design into the system any sort of fundraising efforts needed (see previous WRT CPF benefits, etc.), as well as massive link exchanges to turn it into a portal to the other existing already-set-up vendors like Dat2Zip (if they're all interested, of course). In fact, I was thinking of a reputation-based ranking system tht would reward the best vendors by choosing their position on the link lists based on customer votes.

Picture hosting would naturally be part of the deal, and I already have one of the best (IMHO /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) file-manager scripts around coded up for my LED site so uploading pics can be arranged with ease.

I'm also looking at hooking up with a web-gateway merchant account anyway so I could also offer merchant processing if the guy or gal or group wants to spring for the additional cost to cover their part of the merchant account fees. For those that don't know, merchant accounts cost some % of the transaction plus a specific amount of $ per item for the transactions, plus a certain minimum transaction volume requirement and a monthly fee for the gateway, and usually a terminal-software rental or lease fee as well for Internet gateway access. Whew. That'd be why it's just not worth it for folks making small runs or one-offs to go that far.


As for functionality and accessibility, there are as many ways to design a site's "look and feel" as there are people doing the design work. I persoanlly concentrate on speed OWLI's pages load text in like a tenth of a second - and will have to arrange the site in a way that makes sense.


As an aside, I'm quite familiar with eCommerce. It's good, but it's a bit unwieldly to implement and maintain.

oO