Lot Limits

Loremonger

Could we get a way to add lot limits? I recently had an $11.05 order with 125 pieces in 65 lots. You can imagine it took next to forever to pick and pack, and I mis-packed a lot on top of that. So I'm thinking something along these lines.

Charge x amount per lot above x number of lots.
If you order more than x number of lots, the order total must average x amount per lot.
Orders are limited to x number of lots.

Honestly, I'm not sure what this would look like or what I want to do with my shop, but I can't afford spending an hour or more on small orders with lots of lots. I'm not even a big fan of lot limits, but I wasn't a fan of minimum buys until I got about a dozen sub $1 orders in a row.

Enoch

DagsBricks

Maybe you should add a $3 or $5 minimum buy instead. I get a lot of small multi-lot, low quantity per lot orders. Many of these are coming from ReBrickable. You might consider canceling your affiliate linking if that's where many of your small orders are being referred from.

Congrats, by the way.

Brian

Loremonger

I have a $5 minimum. Maybe I just need to get more efficient at picking orders.

And thanks

Graham

… IMHO.

I do not like lot limits or fees - as soon as I came across them "you know where"

BAM least favorite - no orders (regardless of whether my order WOULD have complied!)

I would say half my orders received are under $10 and those tend to be the numerous lots of ¢5 pieces, time consuming but with a decent organization "not TOO bad"

Some come back later with **nice** orders so "swings and roundabouts" really

AND it's one of the things that I would say is a GOOD feature here!

Minimum order $$ is the way

Graham

Loremonger

@Graham I tend to agree. I have been on the buying end of a high lot, low count order because I was piecing together a wanted list. I even marked stores least favorite for restricting lots to multiples, such as (x10). And you're right. I get some really easy minifig orders for $45 that take next to no time to pack.

Like I said. Not sure where my shop is heading. I just need to save some time. I thought lot limits might be an avenue for that, ala Plastic Bricks Direct.

Enoch

walstib

Enoch, what is your average time to pick a lot?

Loremonger

@walstib I guess that would be a good metric to measure. To wager a guess, I'd say about 20 to 30 seconds, as long as I don't run into a snag.

Lawrence

We were actually discussing lot limits this morning, it's an interesting problem. In my view, parts should be priced accordingly, so it is abundantly clear to the customer exactly how much they will pay without any kind of hidden charge.

Put another way, rather than charging customers extra when they buy less, charge the customer less when they buy more. So, tier pricing.

Tier pricing is a pain because you have to set it up on every item. What if there was a tool so you can for example select all of your parts, increase the price by 30%, then apply tiered pricing of for example, 10% off when you buy five, 20% off when you buy 10, 30% off when you buy 50.

walstib

@Loremonger

Just for more context, is that sorted in bags ready to pack in the appropriate shipping method?

I mean, 30 seconds for that I think is very respectable. I just picked 420 parts in 55 lots and felt good hitting 47 seconds/lot.

How about your time to pack the order if it is separated into stages?

Loremonger

@walstib I'm not sure I understand the question, but after an order is picked, I will do a quick run through to make sure I got all the lots, print and attach a shipping label, and seal it up. All of that usually takes about five minutes.

And 30 seconds was a guess. I have an order waiting on me tonight. I'll time myself and see what it actually is. Also, it goes pretty quickly when you have 2 or 3 parts per lot.

Loremonger

@admin I hadn't even thought about tiered pricing. That might be a great way to go about things. So yes, a tool to automate tiers would be very helpful.

walstib

Just trying to include everything before sealing in the time to try for consistency. I have tried methods in the past where I have done little past picking, then put it aside and packed later.

Mostly starting out and being concerned of canceled orders and time. I've changed to assume all things will be fine and doing more at once in Prep work has saved me time.

Sounds to me though you are not getting bogged down with these steps.

SuperBrick

We were actually discussing lot limits this morning, it's an interesting problem. In my view, parts should be priced accordingly, so it is abundantly clear to the customer exactly how much they will pay without any kind of hidden charge.

Put another way, rather than charging customers extra when they buy less, charge the customer less when they buy more. So, tier pricing.

Tier pricing is a pain because you have to set it up on every item. What if there was a tool so you can for example select all of your parts, increase the price by 30%, then apply tiered pricing of for example, 10% off when you buy five, 20% off when you buy 10, 30% off when you buy 50.

I don't think tier pricing is the best solution since the tier pricing might need to be extreme to have the desired effect. There are some stores that do not want orders with a lot value below $1. To use tier pricing they would need to set the price to $1 when only one part is bought, $0.50 per part when buying two parts and $0.334 per part when buying 3 parts (for parts that currently sell for less than that). But this would make their store look overpriced and they would need the ability to have many more tiers.

I think you should also stay away from giving sellers the ability to add extra fees.

To give sellers the ability to avoid orders with many lots and little value I would suggest giving the stores the ability to set a minimum average lot value. Buyers would only be able to place an order if the average lot value is higher than what the seller specified.

For example a store that uses a minimum average lot value of $1 could receive a $10 order that contains 10 lots but not a $10 order that contains 11 lots.

In this way stores do not charge extra for orders with many lots but they can avoid receiving these orders if they want to. This is also something that could be displayed for each store in addition to the minimum order amount when looking to buy some items.

misbi

How about an option for 'minimum average lot value'. Much like minimum order value in its operation. That way, sellers that prefer not to receive high lot count low value orders, could set their bar accordingly.

budgetkids

I realize the interest in lot limits and the such. However, my opinion and how I run my business is that there should be no limits.
Yes, this means sometimes you might lose money with your time. To me the value of feedback is important. As people have mentioned they do not shop in stores with limits, it is a turn off. So now you lost a sale which could have been over your limit in the first place. The store also could lose the chance of gaining positive feedback.

Retail stores do not say: "To buy anything here, you have to buy at least $5 of merchandise." People go in the store, and may not purchase anything, some may buy one item such as toothpaste. If a retail store does this, they loose sales. They lose loyalty, and now when the person goes on a larger shopping trip, they will not come to your store.

My opinion: no fees, no limits, no tier, just buy what you want.

Chris
Budget-Kids.com

misbi

Retail stores do not say: "To buy anything here, you have to buy at least $5 of merchandise."

Around here, if you're paying with a credit card, retailers frequently insist that you buy a minimum amount - often as much as £10.

budgetkids

I have not seen any around here. I guess it just depends on your country then. I stand corrected. I will still stand true to what I said, no limits with me.

Chris
Budget-Kids.com

Loremonger

Retail stores do not say: "To buy anything here, you have to buy at least $5 of merchandise." People go in the store, and may not purchase anything, some may buy one item such as toothpaste.

I've seen limits in home improvement stores where you can't buy one nail, you have to buy at least a dozen, or a box. Also, if my customers were physically picking their own orders and then coming through a checkout line with barcodes, I don't think I'd mind at all.

At any rate, with the responses I've gotten, I don't think I would implement lot limits anyway. I may play around with tiered pricing if we get a way to automate it.

walstib

I just picked 420 parts in 55 lots and felt good hitting 47 seconds/lot.

Change that to 47% of a minute per lot, I forgot to finish my math. 29 seconds or so.

Loremonger

@walstib Well, I just pulled an order with 19 lots, 98 parts. It took 21 minutes, 28 seconds. That's 68 seconds per lot. That seems like a long time.

Thor

I definitely like the idea of giving sellers the OPTION to have orders meet an average minimum lot value. In fact, I was one of the first sellers who started using it on BL. It was VERY helpful in reducing those 100-lot $10 orders.

An average minimum lot option is NOT a lot limit. It is more like a minimum order amount applied on a smaller lot scale. Buyers can order as many lots as they want, and some of those lots can be for only a few penny parts so long as the overall AVERAGE meets the seller's pre-set amount.

Selling is not charity. It is business. When I buy, I don't expect sellers to work for sub-minimum sweatshop wages. I understand they want to make a decent return for their time and investment. Because if they don't, they will just leave and reduce my overall buying choices.

Give sellers this OPTIONAL tool. It is very reasonable. AND, with an average minimum lot value feature in place there will be much less need for any seller to have actual lot limits. An optional average minimum lot value feature may be the most effective tool for eliminating unpopular lot limits and the even more despicable lot fees.

Thor

misbi

It isn't often that I say this, but well said Foster

walstib

@walstib Well, I just pulled an order with 19 lots, 98 parts. It took 21 minutes, 28 seconds. That's 68 seconds per lot. That seems like a long time.

It does sound like you could have more efficiency there, you've had lots of advice on that already.



Regarding average lot limits as being discussed;

I am not getting many orders it is a concern but it would be very tempting to use to eliminate those few frustrating ones the tools we have don't really cover. In principal it sounds good to me.

The concern I think of is making sure it is painfully obvious in real time what is going on. I would not want to be shopping only to find at the end I did not meet a requirement. I see how it relates to the minimum order, you get your warning trying to check out, not sure I would want the warning this late in the process with the average lot limit.

Some sort of warning while shopping, more intuitive than the minimum purchase, and I can see it being workable.

Badlove

I feel your pain. I have had an exorbitant number of high lot low value orders lately but on the reverse I also seem to have had a few more low lot high value orders. Less than a month ago I had two orders that were over 300 lots and both were in the $40-$50 range on another site. I was seriously considering lot limits but decided against it simply because I am not a fan of them when buying. My suggestion is organization. I took a week off of selling this summer and completely redid my system so that both of those 300+ lot orders took about 40 minutes each whereas before I know they would have taken easily over an hour and a half each. I do definitely like Lawrence's idea about tier pricing, I haven't played around with that too much but maybe I will give it a go.
James

misbi

300+ lots in 40 minutes! Are you sure about that?

Badlove

Yes. Admittedly though on those two orders many of the lots were just different colors of the same part and most were in the range of 1 to 5 pieces which made the counts extremely quick. Typically I am in the 15-20 seconds per lot range. I have spent a great deal of time organizing and reorganizing my inventory to make it as simple and quick as possible for the way I pull orders. Still not 100% happy with it yet but it's a work in progress.
James

misbi

Ah, that explains it then. For orders of a few each of the same part in different colours, you're super quick whereas, orders for a few each of different parts, all in the same colour, you're merely quick .
I think that's about as good as it gets. I reached the conclusion some time ago that there's an element of ying and yang to inventory organisation that just can't be designed out. I think one has to settle for 100% happiness at around 80% efficiency or be doomed to a life of inventory reorganising futility!

Badlove

Unless of course the constant reorganizing is what makes one 100% happy. It is fun in and of itself.

Graham

I had my organization sorted so that I had picking down to 5 - 10 seconds per lot.

However (per my other thread) I have hit an obstacle as I am now having to locate parts in the wrong location

Still don't like lot limits, if you are going to add the option then PLEASE make it very obvious to potential customers, who may have spent an hour or more filling their cart, only to be blocked by any of the above mentioned methods.

May I suggest instead use the bulk method, so that low value parts could only be bought in a specific quantity? All stores have that option already.

Graham

misbi

Bulk isn't without its drawbacks either though. If a buyer wants to buy 52 of a part thats bulked at x50, then they're forced to buy 100. That's a big turn off for buyers. Average lot value could easily be displayed to the buyer as they add items to their cart, so could be as obvious as the order total. Hopefully Brick Owl will be the site that breaks finally new ground in this area. I'm sure that there are a large number of stores using minimum order value as a means to discourage high lot count, low value orders, simply because it's the best tool currently available for this purpose. Avarage Lot Value would be the perfect tool to control workflow too. When you're too busy, raise your ALV to reduce the most time consuming orders, when you're too quiet, lower or remove it altogether.

Timothy_Smith

I'll want a tool that tells me which of your lots would meet me my checkout needs. I don't want to manually price-check multiple lots looking to fulfill some arbitrary requirement. That just gets a closed window.

And you need to be certain you have high-value lots to begin with. I'd hate to pay a penalty for buying out your entire supply of a part and not noticing you had only a few. Lot fees affect me the same way- I'm not paying an extra nickle per part because some seller only has two of something that I want six of anyway.

misbi

I'll want a tool that tells me which of your lots would meet me my checkout needs. I don't want to manually price-check multiple lots looking to fulfill some arbitrary requirement.

Since an average value is calculated using defined mathematical rules, it can never be 'arbitrary' [-X
I take your point about a 'tool' though. Nobody wants their customers to require a calculator as a prerequisite to commencing checkout.

Graham

OR just come to my shop - no limits ever - never have, never will, not here nor "there"

- granted I have received a handful of orders that were difficult - if I remember the worst it was something like 280 lots with 350 parts for a total of $15 (all approx) - but they are rare, very rare - a guess but I would say 95% of orders are painless, only those where I screwed up (or BL messed up my inventory) have been a problem.

If this (lot limits or similar) is introduced - PLEASE make it very obvious to buyers that they have to meet requirements in a store BEFORE they waste their time - like I have too often over there (no more)!

Timothy_Smith

> Since an average value is calculated using defined mathematical rules, it can never be 'arbitrary'

The limit itself is arbitrary.
Finding candidate lots to complete an order might be deterministic. It could be possible to show a list of lots within a store that fulfill the requirement. (might not even be NP-hard). But the requirement is arbitrary. It's not determined using any method other than a seller's guess.