Now that the Halloween group buy is done and everything has been shipped, and many are asking what's next, I wanted to share my tentative thoughts for the next few:
December: multi-vendor, like the last, but I'd love input on what you'd like to see. I was thinking of shooting for something of an overall boozy, floral, and herbal theme, but I'm curious how receptive y'all are to that idea? Same price point, $100 for 30+ 30ml. If there is enough interest quickly, we might be able to pull the trigger to take advantage of Black Friday sales.
January: The Europeans keep raving on about Molinberry, so I was thinking about ordering all 54 flavors. In 30ml, my math works out to $227 shipped, and since that's going to be high for many, I priced 15ml as an option at $135 (numbers subject to change as I find ways to whittle it down).
Febuary: A couple of folks suggested doing a Flavorah buy, and I'm loving the idea. I need to reach out to them to see what kind of pricing we can get buying in bulk from them, but I'm thinking we stick to that nice bite-sized $100 target and see how much we can fit in for that amount.
Feel free to give input, ideas, questions, etc!
didja get the labels? everything went okay?
We sure did! I'll post up the photo of a complete set with labels soon, too! I have one last post coming on the last buy which includes lessons learned and the like so others can learn from the experience, too! :) THANKS! :)
sweet! I would love to see a pic. I'll get them printed else where next time so they can be a bit more water resistant. Sorry that you had to delay it but I'm always happy to help! A molinberry group buy would be fantastic by the way ;)
Pretty impressive looking. I need to build a display rack so we can show those off better -- you can only really see one of the three rows in that one. But the labels look really awesome -- way better than the temporary ones I did with cut up paper covered with scotch tape!
why would 54 flavors be 227 when 30 was 100?
Because MB charges more...
When I target a price point, I can juggle in some expensive stuff with inexpensive stuff (TFA Honeysuckle, INW Biscuit, INW Grape were all fairly expensive additions in the Halloween group buy). When I lock us into something specific like "Molinberry Full Line" I really don't have any wiggle room -- hence why I used quantity as a lever to try and create a more affordable option in that case.
Flavorah is another expensive manufacturer -- I haven't put the numbers together for them yet, but I suspect that we'll have to break their line up into pieces rather than do a "full line" kind of offering in their case, to keep things affordably bite-sized.
Hope that the group buy is a noob friendly ...
What do i mean by this
Flavors from a famous recipe here in reddit eliquid recipe and noob can follow
I mean to say as a noob i may have a lot of flavorings if i go for group buy but if I dont know where to start with all the flavors it becomes a stock only 😁
Some of them are probably more newbie-friendly than others. The last one (and I do still have a couple of those left; 33 flavors shipped for $100) was very newbie friendly, especially for someone that loves creams and baked goods. I think even the more niche kinds of stuff will support solid mixes, though it might require a little more help for some -- I think if anyone were to post on the Telegram chat or "what can I do with these flavors" thread and pointed to any given kit, they'd be able to find some great help and complete recipes. But not every kit is going to let folks make Pebbles and Bronuts and Strawnana Cream.
For me, sticking around that $100-150 range is great. It allows me to participate pretty much anytime. I also like the idea of an FLV buy.
Yup! I'd love to even have a $50 price point, but every time I rack my brain and try to find ways to do this, once all the fixed costs are accounted for, it just isn't nearly as impressive a deal as what happens when we're at the $100+ level. But I'm also price-conscious myself; I can only spend so much -- so I like the "bite-sized" pieces, too. :)
I'll be anxiously checking posts for the next round!
Man oh man I'm excited for this. I was a little skeptical w/ the first one, but since it went over well I'm deffinetly down. What do you use as your payment method? Something like PayPal I'm assuming? Also id love to know what flavors you guys ended up w/ last round!
Paypal worked out really well. I'm open to other payment options if they're absolutely necessary in specific cases, though. Since my main motivation here is actually helping people out and getting a really sick deal along with everyone else, I'm quite flexible. :)
The flavors we went with for the first 8 buyers (the others got everything but the 3 CAP flavors). Here were the initial flavors:
- FA Bilberry
- FA Cookie
- FA Lemon Sicily
- FA Lime Tahity (Cold Pressed)
- FA Meringue
- FA Peach White
- FA Vienna Cream
- FA Wine Champagne
- CAP Apple Pie V2
- CAP Sweet Tangerine
- CAP New York Cheesecake Out of stock, replaced with CAP Vanilla Custard
- FW Blood Orange
- FW Hazelnut
- INW Biscuit
- INW Grape
- LA Banana Cream
- LA Cream Cheese Icing
- TFA Bavarian Cream
- TFA Blackberry
- TFA Cheesecake (Graham Crust)
- TFA Graham Cracker Clear
- TFA Double Chocolate Clear
- TFA Fruit Circles with Milk
- TFA Honeysuckle
- TFA Kentucky Bourbon
- TFA Peanut Butter
- TFA Strawberry
- TFA Strawberry Ripe
- TFA Sweet Cream
- TFA Toasted Marshmallow
- TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
- TFA Vanilla Swirl
Then I was able to sneak in an additional four flavors:
- TFA Dragonfruit (two people wanted this enough to order it separately)
- TFA Spearmint (one person requested, and good for variety as we had no menthols/mints before)
- TFA Ethyl Maltol (one person requested, and good for variety)
- FA Torrone (I really, really wanted it, it just sounds amazing)
The order thread for the last one is here if you'd like to see the communication.
So how much was the savings compared to if someone just bought all these on their own?
I might be able to rig something up in February with my FLV wholesale account for ya'll.
Have you contacted Molinberry at all? I know a lady over there and can ask about a discount of some sort?
I talked with them a good bit today, actually. I expect to have wholesale pricing with them locked in tomorrow if everything continues going well.
MB is overrated. It's just as weak as FW,aka requires 8+% to taste anything. I have their watermelon, strawberry, bubblegum and one more and I was Hella disappointed in all of them. Skipping this one, thanks though.
Good feedback -- but then some seem to rave on about them, too. I think one of the nice things that made me think it'd make for a group buy is simply that there's a community that loves the stuff, and we really can't easily get most of it in the US. That said, I'm not married to the idea; if enough people don't want to join in on that order, we can easily skip it or do something else instead.
Given their price point, having to go to 8% seems out of whack. The few flavors that I can see on ATF and ELR definitely seem to show that same disparity -- some are at 2% average use, others 6%+, but the sample sizes on both are really low.
Give it a whirl man, I've done single flavor testing on the inventory of theirs I do own, I've been mixing for several years, and I'm not a fly by night contributor. They require much higher percentages, and get lost as primary flavors, even in higher percentages.