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Hello Melody,
Has Windstone ever considered starting a list that people can put their names on for the items they would like to purchase that are current production pieces where, to ensure the individual is not wasting Windstone’s time, they contribute 25-50% of the cost as a deposit and Windstone fills their order? If they fail to pay the remaining half after a designated amount of time it goes on the store for sale?
Pros:
Collectors can get the pieces they need to fill in the gaps in their collections,
Windstone has a better idea of what people are willing to put money on,
Windstone is compensated for any time spent either by receiving the remaining amount or selling it on the store, and
Collectors don’t have to viciously compete on the store to get a limited number of items that are intermittently available.What are the downsides to be considered?
The downsides I can easily think of is that Windstone is a business and this is asking them to take on more work for the same amount of money. It would be very nice for customers but I don’t really see any upside for the Windstone crew. They don’t ever have problems selling out all their pieces, and they are a small family business. I think the “sign up to be notified” lists give them a good barometer as to what people are most interested in en masse. I’m not trying to be a downer, but I honestly don’t see any benefit to anyone besides us collectors.
Seeking Test Paints & GBs ! Please get in touch if you'd trade/sell. I'll remove pieces from list by owner request
ANY Red Eyed Unis
ANY Test Paint Bat
UNIS:
The Purple/Yellow Baby Uni of Awesome
Male- Snow Leopard TP
White Lighting Male, Pony, Colt and Grand - I have Mom, Baby, & Young
Ponycorns: Golden Zebra and/or Spotted Skunk
Mother: Okapi
Gothic - Mahogany
PEGS: Male Midnight Calico, Male Bloodstone, Mother Starlight Rain
DRAGONS: Male CoyoteHeadaches for Susie for one thing as she tries to keep track of the requests. Also, Windstone is a very small company with a limited ability to produce their products.
It soon could turn into a struggle to fulfill requested pieces and nothing new being created. Then there would be the possibility that new people couldn’t buy things from the store because everything being produced had already been reserved.
This idea has been proposed before but so far Windstone has not adopted it.
One more point – I’m not sure how you were thinking that Windstone could fulfill requests, but it is much more efficient for the Windstone painters to produce things in batches.
It would be a lot slower for them to be painting two Violet Flame male dragons, and then three Emerald Peacock mother dragons, and then five Blue Morpho bantam dragons, and then four Silver Grulla mother unicorns, and then one Slate Grulla male unicorn, and so on.
I was really hoping for Melody’s perspective given that eBay and secret keepers seem to take priority over items we’d love to collect that are midrange (scratchers, laps, and old warriors) which are a rarity in the online store and sell out immediately.
Hi Cheryl,
This is Susie’s perspective (I know you want Melody’s but I’m the person who handles all the office stuff and processes orders so I thought I’d put my two cents in).
All of the cons other people have listed are definite cons. It would make order processing and bookkeeping very difficult and time consuming. There are so many reasons why someone putting a down payment on a pre-order might want to change or cancel it and there are so many reasons why we might think we can make something and then discover that we cannot make it much later, after pre-orders have been taken. I’m sorry, but in my opinion its much better if we stick to selling what physically exists and is packed up ready to ship.
I was really hoping for Melody’s perspective given that eBay and secret keepers seem to take priority over items we’d love to collect that are midrange (scratchers, laps, and old warriors) which are a rarity in the online store and sell out immediately.
As Susie said, sometimes they think that something can be produced and then discover there is a reason that piece needs to be postponed. For a while Windstone had a real shortage of the gold horns that go on some of the dragons (laps, scratchers, old warriors, orientals) and maybe the horns for the equines as well.
I don’t know whether that problem has been solved or not. It is possible that the small number of laps, scratchers, and old warriors going into the store is because they still have not resolved the horn problem.
Those are definitely valid perspectives, I had not heard about the shortages of horns, thank you for sharing the lessons of the past Etruscan.
We have considered every way we can think of to sell individual pieces, or allow people to pre-pay or something, but all of these ideas require lots more time and paperwork. Because we are such a dinky company, it just doesn’t make sense to keep complicated ledgers on who has paid what for what. Big retail places with a big staff can do that, but we are just a studio with an office and one person dealing with the orders and shipping (Susie)!
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