Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
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Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#2It's like a mix between Quirky.com and Kickstarter if I'm correct?
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#3It's like a mix between Quirky.com and Kickstarter if I'm correct?
We're a degree or two away from several businesses... I'd say we were closer to "Kickstarter meets Reddit".
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#4There's definitely room in the market for several players (in terms of the whole crowd-design/manufacturing space), but I think that down the road, there will be one clear winner. At the end of the day, this industry is a network effects game. Inventors/sellers will always flock to the service with the largest user base to increase their chances of getting their ideas to market. Right now, I'd say the frontrunners are Kickstarter and Quirky, although I've personally seen inventors shy away from Kickstarter because of their increasingly stingy policies. Quirky probably has the most unique model by partnering with big box retailers and tapping into a much broader distribution bottleneck.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#5The site itself is a bit weird. Most of the content looks like it's loaded in via AJAX, and on a slower connection it's pretty jarring. Clicking on "See All" initially shows the "About Us" section of the page, which caused me to think I clicked the wrong link, and went back. It wasn't until I clicked it again that I noticed what was going on. At least throw some kind of AJAX spinner/placeholder or indicator that the page content is still loading.
Cool idea though.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#6There's definitely room in the market for several players (in terms of the whole crowd-design/manufacturing space), but I think that down the road, there will be one clear winner. At the end of the day, this industry is a network effects game. Inventors/sellers will always flock to the service with the largest user base to increase their chances of getting their ideas to market. Right now, I'd say the frontrunners ar…
I don't think there will be one clear winner in the crowd-design/manufacturing space, I think there is room for a site for each niche.
For example, http://www.unbrandeddesigns.com/ is gaining traction as "Quirky for furniture". I see many advantages. The submissions and participants are more focused and passionate since they're only dealing with the type of product they care about. And the team can source, build, sell, and distribute more effectively because they are only working within one industry.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#7I like little niche markets like this. If Roots didn't beat you by two weeks, I'd definitely get a cork wallet; seriously, a cork wallet! I like.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#8The site itself is a bit weird. Most of the content looks like it's loaded in via AJAX, and on a slower connection it's pretty jarring. Clicking on "See All" initially shows the "About Us" section of the page, which caused me to think I clicked the wrong link, and went back. It wasn't until I clicked it again that I noticed what was going on. At least throw some kind of AJAX spinner/placeholder or indicator that the…
Thanks for the input! We're AJAXing in the product data, and then the browser fetches the images from CloudFront. I'll add a spinner asap.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#9Sounds like a great concept. But 35% of markup is too high. Margins for hardware goods are low enough already. Then you take 35% of that. I think you'll end up with a bunch of overpriced items with inventors struggling to make a profit.
Re: Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
#10Sounds like a great concept. But 35% of markup is too high. Margins for hardware goods are low enough already. Then you take 35% of that. I think you'll end up with a bunch of overpriced items with inventors struggling to make a profit.
I can see why you might think 35% is high. Compared to Kickstarter or Esty who only charge ~5%, we do take a larger percentage. But at the same time, we are not just a platform like they are. We are actually a retailer, and we take care of payment processing and fulfillment to consumers. Most retailers charge 50% of the retail price for these services (which cost real money).
Though Kickstarer only takes 5%, you pay another ~5% in payment processing fees, and then you must set up and pay for fulfillment yourself, which is time consuming and expensive! We think it is inefficient that every Kickstarter or Etsy creator has to come up with a solution on their own, often at a large expense. We want the creator to focus as much as possible on building the best product they can, not on fulfillment, website, video, PR, etc etc.
You can read more about our wholesale pricing thoughts at: http://swish.com/wholesale