I’m looking for members interested in organizing a group buy or collective buy.
An organized collective buy can give us the advantage necessary to obtain the kit at reduced price.
By making kits available at lower price we help the community grow in an organized and sustainable way.
To be able to make the kits available we need to reach the goal of 150ea additional kits.
I expect to have a proposed price end of next week.
I’m really excited, as I’m trying to assemble a big number of kits for a non-profit organization in the Caribbean. With your support Maslow is going to be in Dominican Republic soon.
There are two vendors spooling up for kits: @MakerMadeCNC is offering essentially the original kit with a few updates (in pre-order), while @Metalmaslow is offering a kit with several upgrades baked in (anticipating starting shipping in December, ordering instructions pending). I mention this because 1) you might find “depressed” demand since a lot of people have already planned on going with one of those, and 2) if you can’t get the quantity you need, you might be able to broker a deal with one of them for your non-profit.
Regardless, good luck on your project! I hope to hear more about it as it proceeds.
No need to buy 150. Our first batch is just 100 units and you are not going to get a very big discount for just 50 more units. A group buy could potentially save money but the person organizing it should expect to spend about 2-3 hrs per kit in laborordering packaging dealing with customs and customer service for the first batch. Once you have your suppliers down time/kit should go down. Dealing with other people money is no fun either
Hey folks, Nathan here from MaslowSurplusParts.com.
I thought I’d put my two cents in here considering we’ve participated in distribution.
I think this Group Buy concept is really worth taking a serious look into.
We’ve sold 75% of the stock we purchased from Bar and Hannah and after receiving quotes from all of the suppliers for replenishment, it’s clear that we’d have to risk thousands of dollars to simply purchase quantities of only a couple parts. In order to source all parts at quantities of 150 it would likely cost around $40,000. Definitely not the kind of money that we have access to on our own.
The tricky thing is having someone designated to handle all of the group funds, place orders, interact with suppliers to ensure consistency and quality, deal with customs issues, warehouse and distribution of the kits, and reporting to the group on the progress of everything while being transparent about things. Obviously this party would need to be paid by the group for their time spent working on all of this. I’m hinting at it, but I’ll just say it, we would be interested in serving this role if the group elected us as such.
I honestly don’t think there will be depressed demand for quite a while. Every new kit that is built is an advertisement that gets more potential users interested.
Anyone have more ideas on how a group-funded Maslow purchase could happen?
Easiest way would be crowd funding site like kick starter or indigogo. the maslow is already a low profit.markup machine. .Most widgets have a mark up of at least 2x if not 3x. If you pay somone a living wage of $15/hr you might save $50 to $100 per kit, which is great, the downside is when things go wrong their is not guarantee and crowdfunders loose their shirt.
Many people would just rather spend the extra $50 to $100 to make sure they actually get something instead of risking it all in the hopes to save $100. Maybe crowd funding could save more money It really depends on what is included in the kit.
I saw your kit today. I designed some of the upgrades you are offering to my CNC.
I like your kit and the simplicity of the enclosure, we designed an acrylic-based enclosure with dual filtration system.
I’m not a fan of the Makita RT0701C 1.25 HP router but other than that you have a fine kit there.
Since we are using a cBeam z axis it will work with any round shaped router 3.625” in diameter or smaller of which there are probably over 20 in USA and overseas