Announcing Direct Checkout @ Etsy News.

Beginning today, we are rolling out direct checkout for US-based sellers. This is a new and optional way for shop owners to accept and manage credit card payments from buyers directly on Etsy. Direct checkout is currently enabled for a limited number of shops, including the EtsyStore. Direct checkout, in addition to simplifying payment, lays the groundwork for many more payment and checkout improvements, including Etsy-wide gift cards and enhanced international payment options.

Direct checkout will allow buyers around the world to use a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card during checkout from individual shops — online, on mobile, or on Etsy for iPhone — without being redirected from Etsy. There will be one single line of communication around a direct checkout order, sent through an Etsy email, with all shop information and contact information easily accessible.

Big news for the maker/crafter biz owners who use ETSY.

The picture above is the entirety of Coobro Labs.  Coobro Labs is run out of my 800 sq. ft. condo in Minneapolis, MN.  This is where we kit and ship the Coobro Geo, and work on future open source hardware kits.  The reason for sharing this with you is to hopefully encourage those of you out there who think you need a lot of room, and a lot of expensive equipment to start your own KitBiz.  Let me break down the things that we find useful, and things we couldn’t live without.

1. An impulse sealer – This is a must have piece of equipment that we picked up brand new off of ebay for about $50.  This tool takes rolls of anti-static tubing (see item #2) and heat seals the ends to create bags on-the-fly.  You can buy impulse sealers with or without a built in cutter.  The cutter isn’t really necessary, as it is just as easy to cut the bags with a scissors.
2. Rolls of anti-static tubing – These are 500 foot rolls of anti-static tubing picked up from uline.com.  The reason for buying the rolls of anti-static tubing versus simply buying pre-made bags is that you can adjust the size of the bag to whatever length you want, and they are cheap at $25-30 per roll.
3. Laser printer – Below our workbench, we have a used Kyocera EP C170N laser printer that we picked up off of Craigslist for less than $50.  While it isn’t mandatory, laser printers are much more cost effective, and the ink won’t be affected by moisture.  We use the laser printer mainly to print out shipping labels.
4. High quality soldering iron – Having a decent soldering iron is what I feel is the most important tool I own.  The difference between a quality soldering iron and a cheap hardware store model is huge.  I used to find soldering frustrating and stressful, now I find it enjoyable and relaxing.  We have an Aoyue model 2900 soldering iron, but Adafruit’s Hakko FX-888 is a great choice.
5. Fume extractor – A fume extractor is one of my most recent additions, and I can’t believe it took me so long to get one.  There are a lot of toxins in solder, and breathing them in is very dangerous.  I used to simply solder in a well ventilated area, and hold my breath until the smoke cleared.  This is about as stupid as closing your eyes to avoid the arc flash while welding without a mask.  I own the Weller WSA350 model and it works really well.
6. Hot air reflow station – Once I started to get into soldering surface mounted components, this is the first tool I bought.  Before I made my own reflow soldering oven, I used this tool to solder surface mounted components.  While you certainly can use a good soldering iron to solder surface mounted components, this tool will save you a lot of headache.  We have the Aoyue 852A++ model, which can be had for around $150.
7. Reflow oven controller – We use the Rocket Scream Electronics Reflow Oven Controller ($40) Arduino shield.  We have done some testing with our reflow oven by simply cranking the oven temperature up until the solder reflows, then shutting the oven off and letting the board cool in the oven with the door closed.  This seems to work just as good as using a reflow oven controller that follows a specific reflow curve.
8. Toaster oven – This is a toaster oven that we bought in a Woot-Off for about $30.  It is really nice because it has a ‘Stay On’ feature, and it’s a convection oven, so there are no hot spots.  If you don’t plan on working with surface mounted components, you don’t need to worry about the last three items.
9. All-in-one printer – I have owned this HP PSC 1510 inkjet printer for a few years now and it has worked really well for me.  The important thing here is that it has a built in scanner.  You will need a scanner to be able to scan your signed purchase orders for component suppliers.  A scanner basically replaces a fax machine.
10. Component storage – I have a nice collection of Sparkfun shipping boxes that I have saved and used for component storage.  Simply slap a label on the top or front of the box to remember what is inside.  These also work great for project boxes.  You can also see other items we have used for component storage such as mint tins.
11. More component storage – When you are just starting out, this is really all you need.  We store all of the components needed to build up Coobro Geo kits in this small parts organizer from our local hardware store.  Through hole components, even in quantities of 1000+, take up very little room.  Eventually, as we release more kits, we will need to upgrade, but this system works well for the time being.
12. Ikea hacked workbench – My workbench is really just a bunch of components I picked up from Ikea.  The shelving is just Ikea CD storage boxes stacked in between some Ikea birch shelves.  The CD storage boxes work great for tool, parts, wire, and other large component storage.

As you can see, there really isn’t a whole lot to Coobro Labs.  There are obviously some items missing from the picture, such as shipping supplies, but this really is the majority of the Coobro Labs kit making business.  If you have a great idea for an open source electronics kit that you think others would also be interested in, there really isn’t anything standing in your way.

For more inspiration, see how we designed and developed the Coobro Geo, read Ladyada’s other kitbiz tips, or join the kitbiz conversation on the Adafruit forums.

How Makers, Hackers, and Entrepreneurs Can Save the U.S. Postal Service @ MAKE by Phil

Over the holidays, when the Adafruit shipping staff was away, I shipped hundreds and hundreds of packages of open source electronics. I put on headphones, and did my rounds through the factory and storage shelves. It was a good chance for me to reflect on how much I like the postal service (and the companies that are built around it like Endicia and Stamps.com). For a reasonable price, they can get almost anything anywhere. Sure, there are problems once in awhile, but for the volume and price, it’s pretty incredible. We have a daily pick up and delivery here in NYC; the postal staff is like part of my team. A few weeks ago, the postal service had a petition trying to get support so Saturday service wouldn’t shut down — things are getting grim.

You’ve probably seen the recent headlines: the postal service has reported massive loses in the billions. As I spent the days and nights shipping, I thought it would be interesting to consider how we could transform and evolve the postal system. I think makers, hackers, and entrepreneurs have unique ways of looking at things, and I’d like to share some of the ideas I had. Most of all, I’d like your input. Together we could start some conversations on how we could utilize this national logistical treasure. Which brings us to this week’s Soapbox: “How Makers, Hackers, and Entrepreneurs Can Save the U.S. Postal Service.”

Let’s go!

Read more…

Adafruit vending machine @GeekdomSA – The World’s Most Powerful Collaborative Workspace.

Geekdom is a “collaborative” space based in San Antonio, Texas. It’s a twist on the traditional co-working or colocation model, in that we have a strong emphasis on organic group collaboration between our members. We intentionally office people in different fields together to encourage them to get different points of view when working on problems. Additionally, we recognize and encourage the inquisitiveness of our members, and are trying to create a space where they can explore varying interests, ranging from robotics and Arduino hacking, to photography and music. We also open our space to students ranging from middle school to college that are interested in learning and exploring in the tech world, which is where you guys come in.

What your stuff is doing in a vending machine: So Dirk Elmendorf, one of our founding partners here at Geekdom, bought a vending machine and bunch of your kits recently. We took your kits, and put them in said vending machine. Now, those kits are for sale at $1 each, instead of their original MSRP. (The real snacks are in the cabinet across from the machine, totally free of charge.)

The theory here is this: any of our professional members can obviously afford to buy a kit from you guys, so that’s not really the point. On the other hand, the middle and high students that come through here often can’t, or at least are discouraged by the price (or the the necessity of having a parent’s credit card). Here, if they have a buck, they’re welcome to give electronics a shot. We have a Maker space here with all the tools required, and members experienced in electronics who can give them free lessons in the skills they need.

We just got this thing set up, but if we get some pictures of our students working on your kits I’ll be sure to send them your way! I’ve also attached the pictures we took today of the vending machine so you can show off.

Thanks for making awesome stuff folks, keep it up!

Remember folks, all hackerspaces can get reseller pricing at Adafruit – just contact us and we’ll set you up!

Adafruit’s inventory, shipping and production systems are moving to touch based interfaces. For many device types we have at least one of each for all the testing we need to for our products like the Mintyboost, because of this we have been testing some new web applications we are developing for touch screen devices to increase our efficiency and make things easier for our staff. Here’s Tom, he’s entering in the specific locations easily with an iPad of some of our products.

When an invoice prints out, it not only has the item, photo and unique ID, it has the specific location in the Adafruit factory. We’ll be experimenting with QR codes and RFID later but some of the recent improvements lets us ship 10 to 15% faster, and we usually ship same day for many orders now. The new improvements helped us grow from 200 items to over 600 items in a matter of months, at the current rate we’ll have over 2,000 items by the end of 2012, but that’s just a projection – we only like to stock things that has the Ladyada seal of approval (she has tested them), that are best quality and have value for our customers.

Ikea moves to cardboard pallets via BB…

For five decades, wood has reigned as the material of choice for the humble shipping pallet, used for moving everything from Wheaties to washing machines. Now, Swedish retailer Ikea is replacing wooden pallets with a paper variant that’s lighter, thinner, and—the company says—cheaper to use. “We don’t know if the paper pallet will be the ultimate solution, but it’s better than wood,” says Jeanette Skjelmose, sustainability chief at Ikea’s supply-chain unit.

Ikea, which uses 10 million pallets to ship goods from suppliers to its 287 stores in 26 countries, will ditch wood worldwide by January, cutting transport costs by 10 percent. The new corrugated cardboard design can support loads of 750 kilograms (1,650 pounds), the same as timber, Skjelmose says. At two inches high, the paper pallets are one-third the height of wooden ones, and they’re 90 percent lighter, at 5.5 pounds. The svelte profile means Ikea can cram more goods into each shipment. The pallets, assembled onsite by most of Ikea’s 1,200 global suppliers, will be used only once before being recycled.

The best invoice terms to get you paid faster.

Recently, we looked at our data to see if we could extract some insights that might really help FreshBooks customers get paid faster. Our question: how does the wording of the “terms” section of an invoice impact the number of days it takes you to get paid and the percent of invoices you actually collect on.

In the graph above we’ve mapped two key things gleaned from the data of our paying FreshBooks users. In the bar graph, we’ve looked at how long it takes to get paid based on various wordings used in the Terms field on an invoice (e.g. “Please pay within 21 days” or “Payment terms: net 30. Interest accrued at 1.5% per month thereafter”). On this chart of days to pay vs. terms used, the shorter the bar, the better.

The second thing we’ve charted is the percentage of invoices actually paid vs. terms used (the data points in the top section of the graph). On this scale, higher is better. Another way of thinking about this is: the wider the gap between the bar and the data point above it, the better the wording (in general, although there are a handful of exceptions).

Interesting for the kit makers/sellers out there to consider!

The Limits of Blindness on Choice – Sheena Iyengar @ Big Think via DF.

About 60% of the people stopped when we had 24 jams on display, and then at the times when we had 6 different flavors of jam out on display only 40% of the people actually stopped, so more people were clearly attracted to the larger varieties of options, but then when it came down to buying, so the second thing we looked at is in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam.

What we found was that of the people who stopped when there were 24 different flavors of jam out on display only 3% of them actually bought a jar of jam, whereas of the people who stopped when there were 6 different flavors of jam 30% of them actually bought a jar of jam. So, if you do the math, people were actually 6 times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had encountered 6 than if they encountered 24, so what we learned from this study was that while people were more attracted to having more options, that’s what sort of got them in the door or got them to think about jam, when it came to choosing time they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.

We try really hard to only have the best of a product, or item, or only specific tiers that are not confusing. With electronics you can stock everything, but a lot of it isn’t that useful or good. It’s something we think about a lot for every product at Adafruit. During our weekly LIVE video chats, one of the most popular segments is when we talk about why designed something in certain way or why we selected a specific product to stock.

Postal Service delays closings until May 15 – Dec. 13, 2011.

The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to hold off on closing any more post offices or mail facilities until May 15, 2012, to allow Congress time to work on a plan to save the service.

The U.S. Postal Service agreed to voluntarily enact a moratorium on closures, after a series of talks with senators, lawmakers said. Sen. Richard Durbin said the postal service agreed to the deal, and he called it a challenge to Congress to “put up or shut up.”

Fun label automation from .:oomlout:. – “Annoyed with manual label application, we’ve decided to go semi automatic ( ) #oneStepCloserToWorldDomination”

Gingerbread Geodesic Dome Kit…

Build your own gingerbread geodesic house with our dome template and easy to follow instructions including recipes for gingerbread and icing. Template is laser cut and scored for easy assembly. It’s fun. It’s festive.

The SR Gingerbread Geodesic Dome Kit makes a dome home of approximately 9″ in diameter and 6″ tall.

Kit includes: geodesic dome, templates for gingerbread pieces, base, recipes for gingerbread and icing, and instructions for assembly.

Fun and tasty!

Medik!

José Gomez-Marquez, who heads the Innovations in International Health program at MIT, calls the MEDIK a “medical Erector set.” The kit, designed for doctors trying to treat people in places where electricity and other basic services are unavailable, contains dozens of parts that can be combined into hundreds of devices, including a cauterizing pen powered by a solar cell and a nebulizer (for inhalation therapy) that fits a bike pump.

More!

MAKE’s “Ultimate Guide to Kits” is out and it’s one of the best things they have ever created for tinkerers, makers and hackers. To promote it and their new Kit Reviews site, they’re running a “Kit-A-Day” giveaway that includes thousands of dollars in Maker Shed merchandise between now (last Friday, actually) and Xmas. Included are 5 Makerbots– 1 was already given away, but 4 are left. The guide has the biggest selection of open-source hardware in one place!

Each week for the last couple years we do a new products segment when we add new things to the Adafruit store – our video editor George edited up a segment that’s just new products for the folks who have asked for this, enjoy!

Remember, each week we do “ASK AN ENGINEER” at 10pm ET and “show-and-tell” 30 minutes before on G+. So you can catch it live and ask questions right there, or just sit back and watch later with our recorded versions!

Getting Started with Parallax. This is a really impressive wiki filled with examples, code and more. Parallax is hands down one of the best “documenters” of learning electronics – they’re also including Arduino code examples too…

Welcome to the Parallax KickStart wiki! Here you’ll find dozens of programming examples to help you jump start your use of Parallax sensors and accessories sold through retail stores such as RadioShack, Microcenter, and Fry’s Electronics.

These KickStarts give you hands-on help for connecting R/C servos, GPS modules, accelerometers, digital compasses, ultrasonic distance sensors, XBee wireless radios, and more to three of the world’s most popular microcontrollers: the BASIC Stamp 2, Parallax Propeller, and Arduino.

KickStarts are basic, no-frills coding samples, made so you can get started, fast. Each example takes no more than a few minutes to set up and try.

Many of the Parallax sensors and accessories offer enhanced features and functionality not covered in the example code. So when you’re ready to move on and explore more, follow the links at the bottom of each KickStart example page for additional info.

KickStarts provide working code and connection diagrams for the Parallax Propeller QuickStart, BASIC Stamp 2 HomeWork Board, and Arduino Uno. 

In most cases, the programming code will also work for variations of these microcontroller development boards, such as the BASIC Stamp Board of Education. Adapt the wiring connections as needed.

Visit.

Maker Shed has a new catalog, lots of great stuff include many kits from Adafruit. Check it out (PDF)

If you subscribe to MAKE and you’ve received MAKE Volume 28 in the mail, you’ve likely noticed a little something extra that came with it. It’s the first-ever Maker Shed print catalog! We spent many hours putting our great products into a browsable print format for your viewing pleasure. The Maker Shed Catalog is packed with 45 pages of microcontrollers, kits, and gift ideas, as well as a soldering tutorial, maker profiles, and more! It’s perfect for finding holiday gifts for yourself and others (or do what I do and circle items and leave it for others to find).

Phil’s latest, article “If You Can Make It in NYC, You Can Make It Anywhere” – filled with many reasons we (Adafruit) stay in NYC…

I live and work about two blocks from Wall Street in NYC, so it’s been an interesting and charged few months — even more than the usual New York City amplifier. Besides my role at MAKE, I help run an open source electronics factory, Adafruit Industries. During the 2008 financial crash, we were able to get a fairly large space when the financial folks were leaving in droves, and since then we’ve witnessed many changes in the area. Some have been good and some I’ll call challenges. Over the years, a common question I get asked is “Why New York City?” And then there’s “Why run a business there? It’s so hard/expensive/crazy/weird/intense.” Also, “Just move to Vegas — no taxes!” And that’s what this week’s Soapbox is all about: “If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.” I’m going to talk about why I think this is the best city for me, for now, to run a business. My goal is for the maker businesses out there, from one person to many, to post up in the comments on why their city is the best city to run a maker business. Let’s get started.

Read more…

SOFTWARE SUNDAY! DokuWiki – Wiki backends for documentation. In which Ladyada talks about how we use a basic wiki + 20 lines of PHP to create a flexible CMS!

Mark writes-

A special issue of MAKE, the Ultimate Kit Guide 2012, is hitting newsstands this week!

In it, we review over 175 different kits, ranging from rockets, robots, and remote control, to cocktails, kombucha, and cured meat. This wide-ranging kit guide is something I’m really excited about. The MAKE staff and our friends spent a lot of time with a great number of kits, and we picked the ones we feel really good about recommending to others. It reminds me of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was a mind-blowing, life-changing publication for me. I hope the kits in MAKE’s Ultimate Kit Guide will inspire a new generation of people to become active creators of the things that they use in their life.

We’ve also launched a new website based on the Ultimate Kit Guide — visit the soft-launch sneak preview here.

http://makezine.com/kits/

Ladyada writes -

A while back I was bored and wanted to take a look at the gRaphael JS library, so I made a quick dot chart of our order totals by day of the week. Here it is!

You’ll need to download both the gRaphael library and the dot graph library both from the graphael website and place them in the admin/includes/javascript directory. Our file uses the non-minified version of the dot library, use the minified version if you want to save bandwidth.

Make: Live’s Ultimate Kit Episode (preview video).

Join us Wednesday evening for the next episode of Make: Live, our streaming show and tell! This episode is our Ultimate Kit Episode, in honor of the new Special Issue of MAKE, The Ultimate Kit Guide.

Make: Live 20 – Ultimate Kit Episode
Wednesday November 9th, 9pm ET/6pm PT
Watch at makezine.com/live or on UStream
Please join us in the UStream chat or mark tweets with #makelive to interact live with the show.

Angry Birds CEO At Peace With Chinese Counterfeit Merchandise @ Techdirt.

There are a lot of Angry Birds products out there, but most of them aren’t officially licensed. Angry Birds is now the most copied brand in China, and we get a lot of inspiration from local producers.

Right now, we’ve proven that there’s demand, and we’re going for 100 million downloads this year for Angry Birds, and again the same demand for the physical products.

The way we look at it is, of course we want to sell the officially licensed, good quality products, but at the same time we have to be happy about the fact that the brand is so loved that it is the most copied brand in China.

It’s great for us to see the demand, and that’s why we’re building our own stores here. And actually we’re building our first stores here, and not in Helsinki…

We hope to have quite a few over the next 12 months.

“Launching my kitbiz, learning a lot” – success story from the Adafruit kitbiz forums!. crazybutable writes -

This is the Stella amp, an amplifier that I’m in the middle of designing. I wanted a battery powered amplifier that was a little more versatile than all of the LM-386 amps that are out there. So I made my own.

…

At any rate, I have to say thanks Adafruit for having this great kitbiz resource. You guys are amazing, I cannot thank you enough. I never would have done any of this without you.

Read the entire post, it’s EPIC! And check out the maker’s site!

…during the recent economic slump, more Americans have started businesses than at any time in the past 15 years, according to the Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, an indicator of new business creation in the U.S.,shows that .34 percent of American adults created a business per month (or 565,000 new businesses) in 2010. That’s not entirely surprising given the state of the economy: Entrepreneurship is often a choice for people who were laid off and can’t find work.

We are seeing more one-person shops starting kit businesses as well lately.

We really like scales here at the Adafruit factory, we use them extensively for weighing packages for shipment. We also like scales for counting components, especially small ones, like LEDs or pogo pins. There’s nothing more tedious than counting out bunches of LEDs for SpokePOV kits or LED packs. Using a scale is both fast and precise, leaving us more time for designing kits and writing tutorials!

Our new favorite scale! We just picked up a MyWeigh i601 and it is by far our favorite counting scale. I’m so in love with it, I’m going to get another. Its an ideal counter for small components!

Read more…

Up, not North – Nuit Blanche Chiptunes. Jon writes -

Last night I had the pleasure of co-curating an all-night concert of Chiptunes music at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. (Clearly, I’m not too great at this whole “promotion” thing: note that this happened last night.) Nonetheless, it was an amazing event, and I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to participate. Thanks to all our amazing artists, TIFF staff, and volunteers!
My main role was in designing, manufacturing, and building small noisemakers to give out to the crowd. There were four different colour-coded notes, and during one performance the audience was prompted with coloured cards to play along.

Software Sunday – Tariff codes!

People ask me…

“Lady ada, how the hell am I supposed to know what the HST code is for my products!?!?!?”

And I’m all…

“I’m not an import/export attorney, but there’s a lot of places you can research to get the best match!”

This mini tutorial will cover how to find the best tariff code to match your product. Finding the right code is annoying but you only have to do it once, and getting it right will help you get your product through customs faster!

Read more!

A Strategy for Learning From Mistakes @ NYTimes.com.

By concentrating on planning, procedures, and performance, I have reduced mistakes dramatically. I can tell you one thing for sure: If you are quick to say “everyone makes mistakes” without analyzing whether a particular mistake could have been avoided, you are sure to have plenty of them.

Manufacturing Monday – Outlets. You have equipment – you need to power it! This little tip is one that we find so useful, we can’t imagine how we did without: being able to turn an entire outlet strip on and off, easily without having to reach behind some machinery on the floor.

For example, if you have a laser cutter and a filter, you need to make sure that the filter is turned on whenever the laser cutter is used. Once in a while, we’d forget to turn on the filter, and 3 minutes later the room would smell of acrylic. Yuk! After trying signs, notes, and beatings we just bought this awesome (but sadly a little expensive) outlet with remote switch (McMaster #69565K21 / Wiremold UL207RSBC) The switch is lightweight and easily mounts anywhere, the actual button itself is lit when the power is on which is a nice extra…

Read more!

The underground venture capital economy @ The Washington Post.

At a time when the above-ground economy seems to be stuck in perpetual neutral, something very interesting is happening in the underground economy. On do-it-yourself crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter, significant amounts of capital are starting to flow to a group of ingenious projects that bridge the gap between the creative arts and cutting-edge technology — a sweet spot that’s pure money. In some cases, entrepreneurs are raising $100K or $200K at a time — even when they ask for only a fraction of that. In the post-downgrade economy, these instances are proof that a solid business plan, a way to reward passionate supporters and a little DIY mojo goes a long way.

Consider some of the projects that are being funded these days. Two recent crowd favorites include the Desktop Jellyfish Tank, which set out to raise $3,000 and ended up raising more than $100,000 from supporters…

Read more…

Basically, this code will look at all your product categories and items and sum up how many orders were placed for these items. Then it puts them in a table with the current inventory/stock. The table entries have a background of light red if your current inventory will run out before then. For example lets look at this screenshot:

If the future purchasing is like the past, then we’ll run out of 9V regulated adapters in about 4-6 weeks. If you know the approximate lead time for stuff you buy then you can just keep ordering just when the ‘red bars’ start showing up too much!

Read more!

Shipwire (a fulfillment center) posted up a funny little puzzle on how to manage order fulfillment and tracking. gives you a peek into the complexity of shipping goods for a living…

Shipwire warehouses are busy shipping worldwide orders around the clock. One of the engineers thought it would be educational to create a visualization of the order fulfillment process with a focus on the amount of time it takes to fill a box with all the requested items and make it ready for shipping. Given the large amount of orders, only a ten minute interval for a small order fulfillment team was selected for analysis.

Very cool…

We have a thriving “kit business” forum for anyone who wants to work on and sell open-source hardware products. There are tons of resources, tips and people sharing many of the things you need to start a business. We have this forum in addition to our part finder, software-sunday, manufacturing monday, zencart zensday (shopping cart) and other business resources.

Here is a video of Phil shipping!

Many people ask what we use for our shipping system (We use Endicia for postage services) but there are other options, a maker posted in our forums asking about Endicia vs Stamps.com and very quickly Eric from Stamps.com joined in and is answering questions!

So! Post up in the forums if you’d like to learn more about their services – they are answering questions! This is the future folks! Companies participating directly with prospective new customers in forums like ours!

READ MORE… “@dymo_endicia VS @StampsCom ask your questions in our “kit biz” forum!”

Conspiracy Model Sets…

If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you know that half the fun is putting it all together. The other half is gradually losing the support of your friends and family as you slowly slide down the rabbit hole of paranoia and stop bathing and eating in favor of constructing ever more intricate tinfoil hats, but putting it together, that’s were everyone gets hooked. With that in mind, Tamiya, a Japanese plastic model company, put together its “Put It Together” ad campaign featuring plastic model sets of famous conspiracy theories.

They’re back! – http://www.heathkit.com/.

By popular demand, Heathkit is bringing back the kit building tradition.  Successfully building your own products provides a sense of pride and accomplishment, not realized by simply buying something off the shelf.

In late August, Heathkit will debut their new line of Do-it-Yourself kits for common around-the-house items.  The first kit will be a Garage Parking Assistant (GPA).  The Garage Parking assistant kit lets you build your own system that uses ultrasonic sound waves to locate your car as it enters the garage.  The system signals to the driver using LED lights mounted on the wall when the car is detected and in the perfect spot for parking.
 
The GPA-100 kit consists of two primary assemblies – The LED Display in kit form and the pre-assembled ultrasonic range module.  the kit will include everything you need to complete the project except a soldering iron and hand tools.
 
Next on the market will be a Wireless Swimming Pool Monitor kit followed by many more.  Heathkit wants to continue to bring to its customers interesting, unique Heathkit products.  Heathkit is interested in learning what types of products kit builders would like to build.  Kit builders can submit their suggestions through this website using the Contact Us email.

For the shipping geeks, the postal service has a new site. We are exploring it now, many/most of our bookmarks for things like postal pick ups have changed…

Introducing the
Redesigned USPS.com®
The world is changing, and so are we.
When you go online, you expect to accomplish what you want to do quickly and easily. At the U.S. Postal Service®, we’ve heard you loud and clear. That’s why we’ve redesigned USPS.com to make it easier and faster to do business with us.

Our zen-cart mods/hacks/tips & tricks – Forcing shipping method by value…

We ship via UPS and USPS (postal). Postal is great, inexpensive and fairly fast. One thing it isn’t is automatically insured or tracked. Because of this we externally insure all packages including USPS but still, we found that shipping expensive things by USPS was not a great idea. That’s what UPS is for, which is a trackable service that has better systems in place for valuables. So, for orders over $200, we force domestic customers to use UPS as opposed to USPS. Here’s how to set an arbitrary limit on the usps shipping module…

Read more…

Our zen-cart mods/hacks/tips & tricks – Custom Sort Invoice Items…

This one is a little odd, but is very handy when you have over 200 items you ship! We have all of our kits and items stored on shelves and when the shipper goes to pick the items, its handy if he doesn’t have to go back and forth across the room to find all of them. So what we do is we sort the items so that they appear in spatial order. This means all the items that are next to each other on the invoice are next to each other in real life!…

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The Price of Bad Pricing @ NYTimes.com…

If there is an aspect of running a small business that doesn’t get enough attention, I think it’s pricing. Unfortunately, there’s a good reason for that: pricing is hard to do and easy to ignore. But that’s especially dangerous right now when there’s a good chance your own expenses are changing.

With most management decisions, your goals are pretty straight forward. Most of the time, you simply want to be the best at whatever you do. You want to have the best staff, the best service, the best marketing. But pricing is more complicated. You may say you want to offer the best price. But what does that mean? The lowest price for the customer? The price that will provide the best value for the customer? The price that will result in the highest profit for your company? The price that will result in the most sales for your company?

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This is an excellent article, a lot of kit makers do not price their kits so they can have enough margin to not only sell to customers but to resellers, this really limits where and how their products can be sold.

More Entrepreneurs Hire ‘Fulfillment’ Outfits to Store and Ship Their Products @ WSJ.com

Brett Teper faced a logistical problem when he and a partner founded ModProducts LLC’s ModKat, which makes high-end litter boxes for cats, a few years ago. The New York City residents needed a way to cheaply store and ship their bulky goods.

Their solution was to outsource product distribution to Shipwire Inc., one of several services that small- and medium-size businesses are increasingly using for storage and shipping, or “fulfillment.”

With Shipwire, Mr. Teper doesn’t touch his products. They are sent from a Taiwanese manufacturer to a Shipwire warehouse near Los Angeles, where they are packed. When a customer buys off ModKat’s website, an employee approves the order, which then goes directly into Shipwire’s system. The boxes are shipped within 24 hours.

The service “allows us to do this without really thinking about … fulfillment and logistics,” said Mr. Teper.

Businesses such as Shipwire, Webgistix Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Fulfillment by Amazon, among others, do the work. EBay Inc. plans to test its own service this year, a spokeswoman for the online marketplace said. A small group of eBay sellers in the U.S. and China will be able to have eBay handle all parts of fulfillment. It’s unclear whether eBay would run its warehouses or use a contractor.

We often get asked if we ever plan to outsource our shipping, we do not. But it is an option for the kit maker/maker business who does not want to do shipping. Lots of small companies we know do outside fulfillment and they seem to be happy with the results. If you use any of these services post up in the comments and share your experiences (as a customer or as a partner).

Zen Cart automatically adds product numbers to each of your products. Here’s some super easy ways to make those numbers more visible.

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When you order from Adafruit you order confirmation email now includes direct links to product pages, tutorials and any additional information you may need to get started quickly with your purchase. Many people save their order confirmation emails for reference, now we include even more information to store, share and bookmark.

ZENCART ZENSDAY – Daily stats! Our zen-cart mods/hacks/tips & tricks. If you don’t measure something you can’t improve it, we like to view the daily stats at Adafruit each day, here’s a mod for your own Zencart install if you’d like to do this too.

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We now have little labels on items with a barcode and our url shorterner (fits nicely!). This is part of the many things we’re doing to make it easier for our staff to ship orders and for our customers to find the links needed for products.

Zen Cart Mods! Our mods, hacks, tips and tricks for open source shopping carts. This week – Tariff information for each product. If you plan to ship items abroad, the package will end up having to pass through the recipient’s customs office. These offices basically look at whats in the package and send a tax bill for any import tariffs or VAT. To speed up shipping (especially with a automated shipping system) its handy to have each items tariff information attached to the product. This tutorial will show how we do this by creating three new product attributes that are stored in the database: Tariff Number, Country of Origin and brief description.

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Sharing biz tips for makers, this is what it’s all about – Efficient printing of USPS shipping labels @ Wayne and Layne…

When you use the online USPS shipping label generator (we use it via paypal), it generates a full page of information. The top half of the page is the label you affix to the package, and the other half is full of extra info that isn’t needed for the shipping label. If you want to use full-page label sheets, you really don’t want to waste half the page each time you print a label. To work around this, we developed a script to split a PDF into top- and bottom-half PDFs, enabling you to only print the top half (the actual label) while leaving the bottom half of the label page usable for the next label you print.

For example, here’s a slightly-doctored image of the original printing label.

ZENCART ZENSDAY – Stashing inventory! This mod will let you ‘save’ 3 (or whatever #) pieces of inventory of each item. So if the true inventory is 50 pieces, the store will act like there is only 47. This will let you keep a stash around in case you need extras to replace customer’s damaged or lost packages, or if your inventory is off by a few pieces.

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Digital shipping scales with serial output tutorial!…

“Here is another business oriented tutorial (which is also, secretly a sensor tutorial). For measuring packages we have two serial-output scales. One can do up to 10lbs and the other 150lb (or 300lb). These are basically load cells with data output and precalibration. We use them for our automated shipping system but who knows what else they might be good for?”

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