I’ve been thinking about the $150 materials that @dan and Glowforge will be sending us. There have been a number of comments about customizing that pack, trading with other Forgers, or even not wanting it at all.
It has also been unclear if the pack of materials will be send WITH the Glowforge or as a separate package.
This has given me an idea that makes sense to me, but I’m curious about it scaling up. What if we were just given $150 credit to the Materials Store and a coupon code for Free Shipping? That way each person can choose their own custom set of materials, and have it shipped when they want. I assume/hope that the materials store and the catalog will be available before our Glowforges are shipped to us so we can browse them and purchase the designs/material beforehand and be ready and raring to go day 1 (hour 1? immediately?).
You can even make the free shipping coupon a one-use thing so if someone gets $50 worth of material, they still have $100 credit to use, but they would have to pay for shipping for the second batch of material.
This would provide the most flexibility of the choice of materials, delivery time, as well as ramping up interest as the delivery date approaches. You can even have a couple of pre-made $150 bundles of material (an Acrylic Package, Wood Package, Plywood Package, Leather Package, Assortment Package, Samples Package etc) that can be chosen to ease shipping hassles.
Honestly… this was a gift from @dan and Glowforge…Something that was not necessary at all.
It seems inappropriate to try to change a gift. Accept it with thanks.
The full details of the implementation of the gift are still unclear/being worked out, and I feel like parts of @julybighouse 's idea are some of the more feasible thoughts I have seen in terms of executing the gift. It is not a bad idea, per se, and feels to me like more of a hopper/suggestion than a demand to change or increase the value of the gift (unlike many of the ridiculous demands that popped up over the last two days).
But that said…
One potential problem with it would be if they sent the credit/coupon code to people and allowed them to order the materials before the glowforge ships, some of those people could then end up canceling their GF order, thus receiving the gift for nothing. I love free stuff, but I would not personally want to be sending free gifts to people who stopped believing in my vision/product/whatever. I think it would leave a pretty sour taste in my mouth.
Then again, I don’t operate in anywhere near the same financial circles as these folks.
Personally, I would hope to be able to get my hands on as large a variety of materials as possible, especially if that means getting something that I wouldn’t have purchased otherwise, but which turns out to be amazing, or fun to work with or whatever. I will be wanting to experiment with art stuff on as many possible surfaces and substrates as possible, but I understand that there are plenty of people who ordered the GF with one or two very particular uses in mind, and they might be happier being able to choose an “all wood” bundle or an “all natural” bundle, or even a “donate my gift/credit/bundle to a makerspace/school” option.
@smcgathyfay My intentions are not to look a gift horse in the mouth and demand more. I was hoping to share an idea that might even save the company money. If people DON’T want the material, they don’t use the credit, but appreciate the gesture of the apology. Others are adamant about not appreciating “Death Fabric”, and this would allow those folks to not have to receive it, while receiving a package that they would appreciate.
Maximize the Appreciation, minimize the work. I fully understand that this is more work than just dumping the same package in every Glowforge, but maybe people will appreciate it enough that the extra work is worth it?
@jbv yeah, I didn’t think about those who would work the system that late in the game. But perhaps those kinds of people would be offset by those who don’t want the extra bundle at all? I see this Materials store only opening about a month or so before the GFs are shipped. If you’ve waited that long for your GF wouldn’t it be logical to think that you’d also still be there to receive your GF in a month or so? Probably a naive thought on my part, but I tend to think the best about people.
I’m just guessing here and IMHO while I’d love to pick and choose what I/we received. I’m guessing to maximize what we get and minimize labor and all of the logistics and the cost of a piece of leather vs board, trying to balance out who gets what is logistical nightmare.
Taking the triage approach to this is easiest. If we have enough of X to ship to everyone they all get it, if we don’t have enough of Y no one gets that. This way everyone gets treated equitably. Running a food pantry has taught me this, you give one person something different be prepared for anarchy. and good lord the people that have brought a pro more money out of pocket because they spent more??? It just never ends, and again I would love to choose however this was a gesture to soothe the pain of the wait. I’m very appreciative of everything @dan has done and continues to do.
I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If they asked me, I’d probably opt for the money to be applied to the purchase price, but that’s only because I’m more interested in working with my own materials rather than coming up with projects to fit what they’re sending. I appreciate the thought and consideration.
Oh, sorry @smcgathyfay, that wasn’t in the email. It was mentioned in the Q&A (which I missed, but listened to last night while I was cooking dinner) that they are still developing and doing quality assurance on the proofgrade materials, and that they don’t know for sure what will be in the gift packages at this point. Also that sometime soon, @Dan will be starting a thread asking about what people are hoping for in product offerings (similar to the earlier threads about what people would hope to have as software features). I can’t remember if he said anything about the shipping method, but I would think that they would not try to re-design the packaging for our glowforges to accommodate a material pack.
@smcgathyfay I thought that I heard something from @dan saying that they weren’t sure if the materials would be able to be shipped with the GF because it might change the size/shape/weight of the GF to where it would change the shipping costs too much.
I kind of like this idea in principle, on the assumption that they are already building support for gift certificates and free shipping coupons into the store to support it. Since these features are very common on most major online stores these days, that might be already planned. I also suspect that there would be a good market for variety packs of various sizes and makeup that new owners would find attactive in the future too, even if they had to pay for them.
Also, if they provide the coupon codes only when each of us has submitted our address for shipping, that would mitigate the potential for gaming the system.
As we (my wife and I ) are in the laser noobs camp, and don’t already have a product line this will be integrated into, we don’t have a clue what kind of materials we will be using for most of our projects a year down the road. As such, we are more than happy to get whatever materials they send us, the more variety the better! I figure this will give us exposure to a few that we may not have even considered if we were to have to select our own.
For us and others like us, the bundled variety pack idea would solve that nicely.
However, as one of the thousands of international buyers, I do wonder whether orders with a free shipping coupon applied from outside the US would present any additional challenges they don’t already have plans to support out of the gate.
I’ll be happy with whatever they send us. It will be fun to experiment with materials different than the ones I normally use. I’m especially looking forward to shopping the catalog and maybe creating some beautiful and useful items for myself or as gifts.
If I end up with materials I don’t want/can’t use, I’d be happy to exchange them with someone else willing to do the same.
We have a lot of news. So much so, I’m going to start out with a short summary before I get into the details. • Due to schedule delays, we plan to ship your Glowforge by December 2016 instead of the original date of June 2016. New orders will ship after yours, in 2017. • We feel terrible about this delay, and by way of apology, we are including $200 of extras. • Your Glowforge will ship with $150 worth of Proofgrade™ materials as a free bonus.
I didnt see the part about asking people what they wanted…I’ll listen again…I just heard that they (the Glowforge team) was discussing it…not asking others opinions.
That is a good point, nice. Take that fraudsters!
Also thanks for finding the correct spot in the video, i thought it was near the end, and was starting to think that I had imagined it altogether.
