So I had an idea earlier today, seems there are lots of folks out there that enjoy cloning some of their favorite recipes. Never really been my thing, but I have an idea that I think some of you all may or may not enjoy.
Below is just where I'm at idea wise for a quarterly clone challenge with a cash prize.
Here's what I'm thinking.
Participants decide on a juice they want to clone. I, will co-ordinate seeing as I suck at cloning so won't be participating. We'll run it like this:
Everyone contributes say, $50. This $50 funds a few things including the cash prize at the end.
1.) 30ml bottle of the original in your preferred nic strength, obviously, have to have some of the original if you want to clone it.
2.) The necessary number of 6ml bottles to bottle your final attempt at the clone after 30 days.
3.) Shipping costs.
So here's what I'm thinking as far as how the steps would go.
1.) 15 days to gather interest and settle on a juice to clone.
2.) 7 days to make your deposit
3.) 15 days for me to order the juice, package and ship the juice, empty 6ml bottles labeled with your 'anonymous' tag so I know who's juice is who's.
4.) 30 days to perfect your clone and ship the necessary number of 6ml bottles (0 or 3 nic I'd suggest based on peoples preferences) back to me based on total participants minus 1 (yourself).
5.) 15 days for me to ship all of the 6mls out to everyone that participated and everyone votes on the clone that's closest to the original (can't vote for your own).
6.) That person wins the remaining money from the prizepool (could do runner up gets their money back, etc, payout options are obviously open to discussion).
I'd guess that my costs would be ~$10 for the bottles and shipping/packaging costs twice. If we had a ton of participants ~15+, this number would likely increase some due to larger shipping costs. Then it'd just be the cost of the juice, assuming ~$20 juice, that'd leave $20 per person for the winner.
10 entrants in this case would earn the winner $200.
Let me know your thoughts, just trying to gauge interest to see if this can be done to add a little more fun to /r/diy_ejuice.
Obviously, after the winner has been selected, they will be required to post their recipe. Everyone else is obviously welcome to share their recipes and discuss/improve on the winner etc.
Let me know what you think!
Love this idea. Maybe another mod or two for judging? Maybe you can find a vendor on here who can offer bulk discounts on the original juice even. I'd be down, not every month, it would depend on the original juice selection
Yeah I'd probably just run this quarterly instead of monthly.
Don't really want the mods to judge but they are obviously welcome to participate. I'm not judging, the participants are judging each other =).
Each participant after finalizing their recipe will bottle it into the necessary number of 6ml bottles labeled with example: Participant A, i know who that is, no one else does. They send all those 6mls to me, once I receive them from everyone, I send them back out to everyone to try each clone.
And yes, odds are, we'll get the juice at a discount depending on order size. If the vendor offers wholesale pricing on their juice, I can get a wholesale account with them myself, but the minimum order may be significantly more than we need (example: my minimum wholesale order size is 25 bottles).
Cool. You clearly thought it out more than I did ha. A month wouldn't even be time to order flavors. This sounds awesome because it would be fun and it when it was all said and done diy'ers would have another great clone recipe. I've never tried to clone a juice, but I'll do it.
Down like a clown, Charlie Brown.
Bout time we have some fun :)
Might want to be careful of the legalities regarding cash prizes though :) But I'm all for it in the grand scheme of things.
I think the cash should be fine, at least in the USA. After all, think of all the march madness, fantasy football, super bowl squares, (etc) pools there are and no one really seems to care
It's a decent idea, only problem is what's stopping people from just filling the 6mL bottles with VG'd down permium juice, or just ordering more of the premium in 0mg and adding 3mg nic to make it taste slightly different?
Only way to really ensure this doesn't happen is to force everyone to supply their recipe with their final bottle. Once the winner is chosen by the participants, I release the recipe, if participants say the recipe is way off to what they tried etc, then we have a problem that would need to be mediated.
Wow, this is brilliant IMO. Such an awesome idea. I've always thought crowdsourcing clones was the way to go but it feels like it would be a nightmare to organize. Sounds like you've got it figured out.
I'm 110% in support of this and will happily contribute for some of them.
I doubt my own cloning skills would ever see a return on the investment to participate, but the cover fee sounds like it would be worth while to learn from sampling other people's efforts. I'll probably participate in the first one at the very least, assuming the target juice is in my own flavor profile.
If it were up to me I would just give everybody a week's notice on the flavor and then 30 days to clone it.
Leave the buying of the flavor and all that up to them. After the 30 days everybody posts their recipes and the subreddit votes. This will take almost all of the work out of your end. You won't have to ship things and bottle things, etc.
As for a prize I would maybe crowdfund the subreddit for something small. I'm sure people would be willing to contribute financially.
You'll have more participants this way. Anyway it's not up to me but that's just what I think.
I have no problem with this method either, I just don't see everyone mixing each others recipes and trying them.
I'm in.... obviously.
I'll re-visit in a bit. Been quite busy lately and with baby coming in under a month...
Might be something to consider 4th quarter unless someone else feels like taking over to co-ordinate.