Powder coating options

[Strydur]

I am open to suggestions on how to sell powder coating without it being a pain in the you know what. Even though I made it say in big bold letters that customers had to contact me first I still get over 50% of the powder coating orders with people asking for only part of the item powder coated without a E-mail first. I guess my only option is to make a pictorial and make it so these options can be chosen on the powder coating page as options. If anyone has some suggestions please post them here.

[Lord Maul]

A pictorial would be a great thing, but it is very hard to implement. You would need a picture of every single PC job that anyone could possibly want. It would also be hard because you would need 50 pictures on the PC options page and a huge drop down menu.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

I think Maul is right...there's just too many options on some of parts to implement a drop-down menu selection...unless you limit it to just the most popular requests, and only those....nothing more. No two tones or custom requests...you either get the pc option as Tim has it in the store, go without, or do it yourself.

How about a powder coat gallery topic, where we get people that have had powder coating done by Tim on their MHS parts, and Tim can pic and choose the pc options from there. Or better yet, just stick with the styles of the examples you show in the Powder coating section. Most of those look good to me as they are, and could be reversed.

[Swordlord]

You could make powder coating unavailable as an "Add to Cart" option until the client contacted you with specifics on their powder coating needs & desires. That would give you the chance to tell them how easy/difficult the particular job is, and also how much extra it would cost for those occasional(?) wild & crazy requests.

[Lord Maul]

How about a powder coat gallery topic, where we get people that have had powder coating done by Tim on their MHS parts, and Tim can pic and choose the pc options from there. Or better yet, just stick with the styles of the examples you show in the Powder coating section. Most of those look good to me as they are, and could be reversed.

We've got one already.
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...ead.php?t=4330

The problem is, like with the other galleries, that most people don't post pictures of their sabers. This is probably from either laziness or because they aren't forum members and don't have a need to join.

EDIT: I think that you could probably have a drop down for the more common PC modifications. For example, removing the PC from ribs on a ribbed grip (See my signature saber) is probably very common. Same thing for hilts style 2,3,4, and the new fluted one.

[Vallen Kel-Romarr]

How about this? Make two distinct options under the "Services" section:

Standard Powder Coating:
Description includes something like "One color, complete coverage of a standard MHS piece, with no machining" with a per-piece price

Custom Powder Coating:
Description includes something similar to the "Custom work fee" description, like, "This is for when I ask a customer to pay a custom powder-coating fee.
Only purchase this if we have discussed a custom powder-coating request and I asked you to pay using this."

You could also just leave out the "Custom Powder Coating" option and cover them all under the existing "custom work" section (add a note to that effect in the the existing "Custom work fee" and "Powder Coating" sections).

Also, you'll probably want to remove the multi-colored piece from the picture of the "Standard Powder Coating" option -- this could be causing some of the confusion, making it look like that's a standard request.

I'll admit to a certain anxiousness that the custom requests stay around and flexible, as I'm very close to making such a request.

EDIT: Apparently, I am desperately trying to add the word "Poweder" to the English language. It's the new 'black' (with machined silver grooves).

[Goodman]

Don't process the payment until email contact has been made.

Perhaps require a field in the payment section where carts with powdercoating are flagged and need to enter their email (along with a header reiterating that they need to contact you first before they complete checkout). Then, check for their pre-order email, and if it isn't there, reject the order and send them an automated notice instead of the "we received your order", that says "we see that your order includes powder coating yet will not be processed until you email us." or something similar.

[Lord Dottore Matto]

How about this? Make two distinct options under the "Services" section:

Standard Powder Coating:
Description includes something like "One color, complete coverage of a standard MHS piece, with no machining" with a per-piece price

Custom Powder Coating:
Description includes something similar to the "Custom work fee" description, like, "This is for when I ask a customer to pay a custom powder-coating fee.
Only purchase this if we have discussed a custom powder-coating request and I asked you to pay using this."

You could also just leave out the "Custom Powder Coating" option and cover them all under the existing "custom work" section (add a note to that effect in the the existing "Custom work fee" and "Powder Coating" sections).

Also, you'll probably want to remove the multi-colored piece from the picture of the "Standard Powder Coating" option -- this could be causing some of the confusion, making it look like that's a standard request.

I'll admit to a certain anxiousness that the custom requests stay around and flexible, as I'm very close to making such a request.

EDIT: Apparently, I am desperately trying to add the word "Poweder" to the English language. It's the new 'black' (with machined silver grooves).

An excellent and easily implemented suggestion.

[Darth Sorn]

Right!!! What about a ref number system, you email Tim tell him what you want and he give you a ref number. So when you order it you HAVE to put in the ref number and if you don't it won't be put into your basket.

[Vallen Kel-Romarr]

All right, I was thinking about this more overnight, and realized that I *didn't* actually make any suggestions based on the OP -- standardized options for more complex PC orders. Sorry this is going to be loooooooong and kinda detailed. I've been a designer/programmer-for-hire in previous lives and have actually implemented similar solutions; these are some of the decision points I've used for something like this:

Considerations:
1) Is the site infrastructure up to handling something of this nature?

2) Can pricing be standardized enough to prevent a bewildering list of options while maintaining average profit? Is the cost in terms of materials/time/skill required different to do 1) a PC with some parts masked/machined to create a piece that's colored only in some places 2) a two-toned PC in two different colors 3) a multi-layered PC using transparent colors? My guess is yes. Are they close enough that you could charge the same price for all three services and come out ahead? Do any of the three take significantly more time/skill than the others? Does this vary by part selected? Can the most common requests be standardized into ten or fewer options that cover most eventualities and can each option be priced in a logical manner with a flat fee? Can you represent each of these 10 options with 1-4 pictures?

3) Is standardization easier in the long run, and does that ease outweigh the customer (and shop artist) satisfaction of being able to order/offer truly custom pieces (within certain guidelines, of course, just like the ability to order fairly customized parts as long as they are created using standard MHS parts)?

4) Does the proposed solution SAVE time and effort for the shop, or end up creating more work in the long run? Again, one key is being able to greatly simplify the decision trees while still allowing a reasonable amount of flexibility to justify offering "custom" jobs.

5) Currently, are "custom" PC job quotes broken down and priced based on some sort of rough pricing matrix, even one that exists only in someone's head? ("Ok, so a two tone is about this tough, so I need to charge at least this much... adding in machining costs at least THIS much...") Alternately, is each custom PC job looked at as a whole and quoted based on the entire job? If the second scenario is more common, standardizing the options available (and limiting choices) might not be as desireable when viewed against the loss of flexibility on both sides of the request.

IF the answer answer to most/all of these questions is "yes," then standardization of PC options probably makes sense.

Suggested implementation:
Depending on the existing website/DB infrastructure and the person doing the coding, I could see this being feasible. I guess the "easiest" (but not "simplest" -- and yes, there's a difference) way to do this would be some sort of combination of the following:

1) limiting the options and standardizing costs/processes based on the most common requests and/or relative difficulty. Does it cost more to PC certain pieces than others? Sure, but a flat fee of $12.50 is being charged that takes into account average costs. Figure out how to do the same for more complex requests. This goes back up to a few of the questions above: Can the most common requests be standardized into ten or fewer options that cover most eventualities and can each option be priced in a logical manner with a flat fee? Can you represent each of these 10 options with 1-4 pictures?

2) tiered drop-downs/"smart" menus/radio buttons/etc. One example:

Standard (one piece/one color/full coverage ONLY, select once for each distinct color)
L1 select color
L2 select/list pieces (if you really wanted to get complicated, this could be a checklist populated by the contents of the cart, with an option for "Provide your own" pulling a secondary checklist of acceptable parts for PC)
L3 Optional services? drill and tap? machine switch hole?
//Generate a price based on (pieces*PC fee)+(services*fee)

Custom (select once for EACH custom PC job).
L1 select piece
L2 select standardized options (see #1) that can be applied to that piece. This allows granularity if you don't want to have certain options available for certain pieces.
L3 select color(s) and locations -- choices are offered based on the combination of L1 and L2. This could get fairly complex/depending on part/PC option combinations, but only has to be set up once, versus trying to remember to ask all of the appropriate questions with each custom quote.
L4 select available services (drill&tap, etc)
//Generate price using pre-determined price tables for each service. Can be as simple as each standardized option has a standardized flat fee, or as complex as each standardized option has a list of flat fees*multipliers depending on part selected, number of colors selected, etc)