I'm just thinking
I'm still "planning" my first order (lol). Gives me time to save up $ at least. But I know that a lot of the flavors on my list are hard-to-find ones.
What if there was a feature somewhere where you could "pre-order" and secure a list of flavors as and when they arrive. You'd have to pay a deposit etc. And then once they've all arrived you have [x] number of days to place the final order otherwise the stock will be released for anyone to buy.
Make sense? How dumb an idea is this?
Are some vendors even present on this sub to see this
edit: would be cool instead of being on tens of "notify me" lists and waiting for everything to sync up
I already had a discussion with /u/gremlinjuice about this. He's going to try and implement it. May have already implemented it now that I check the site; you can add flavors from the soon tab to your cart. Either way, we're working on getting vendors to add this feature to help us save on shipping costs, and help them better analyze the climate of the market.
We discussed this a few months ago and I figure it is far too expensive for vendors to try to host space for your order.
Warehouse space and inventory management come at premiums.
Oh. I must have missed it. But it could be for an additional cost to cover that stuff. I think if any vendor did this it'd be hugely popular
I agree but you'd be surprised what the labor burden is to run a "juice locker".
Labor to pull an order for packing is the same as dumping into a juice locker. Then when you close out the order someone has to recheck the order again. That's another labor cost.
If your juice locker is just a 12"x12"x4" plastic tote bin, that's more inventory space than probably 100 bottles of concentrate. If 200 people had juice lockers you're talking about maintaining and tracking over 66 cubic feet of lockers. That's huge and it all needs shelving and labels and monitoring.
I think it could be done but it doesn't make sense to. I pay $6 shipping all the time for just one concentrate I need. Once averaged in to my buying budget it ends up being inconsequential.
Could be a virtual locker though. Pay an extra $1-2 per bottle to reserve it for (say) 30 days; it comes out of inventory, and if there are 3 bottles on hold then the system shows empty with 3 still on the shelf. After 30 days, it goes back in the available stock, and customer's account is charged the holding fee. Zero labor required for the hold. Any decent MRP / ERP system should be able to do this with no problem.
That's kinda why I feel like once I find something in stock? It's hard to not by a super big bottle of it just to not have to buy it again and deal with shipping chargers anytime soon.
Are any of the major DIY supply players located in Southern California? Like San Diego or Los Angeles? That could save me some shipping and give me a reason for a mini road trip with a buddy.
i would rather just have a order instead of notify me at BCV that just notified and charged and shipped it out when they get their always out of stock FA bulk flavoring back in.
That't the idea I pitched to the gremlins, have people pay for the full shipment of all flavors, even out of stock, give them a general timeline of when their stuff will ship out, then ship it all out as one when the out of stock items come in.
That's a good idea in a way.... But it would suck for all your needed flavors to be in except for obey, and that one is weeks and weeks away
I think people would find ways to complain and make the company look bad and take up too much of their time. People would be emailing like "I preordered this a month ago where is it!!" and the company would have to explain the trouble their having with shipping or something, and say something like "We are hoping to have it by the end of the week" to which the customer thinks they should have it by the end of the week, but they don't and then they go complaining on reddit about how this company is just holding their money and cancel their order and order from the next shop that already has it back in stock. It would be messy. They'd also have to alter shipping so that if an order is split between preorder and in stock it charges 2x shipping and carts are usually built in by the e-commerce host making that kind of a feat.
Nah, you should just be able to backorder things. Problem is, backordering is HARD... it's why anyone who does do backorders always charges more than the other retailer/wholesaler that doesn't.
Hell, look at Grainger. Anything you need to run most any business but the prices are high. They excel at inventory management, customer service and timely backorders.
I deal with a couple of companies that I won't backorder though, they simply do not get it right. (Not juice related)