Hey all! I wanted to give some shop updates, project updates and basically just what is new or happening in the last say 2 months.
With some help of a friend who recently purchased one of my Artillery Sidewinder X1’s, sadly Bones is no long apart of my family, but he is still in the what I would call extended family. My friend is a part owner of an escape room, actually located in beautiful South Lake Tahoe, and the company is called Trapped in Tahoe https://trappedintahoe.com , and she was wanting to be able to 3D print her own props to help with some new rooms they are working on. After discussing size of prints and overall speed and desires we settled on one of my artillery’s. So now I have a blank spot on one of my shelves. BUT my friend found an amazing 3D creator who does Cosplay modelling! I quickly subbed to his Patreon and if you have done any kind of cosplay, you may have heard of him: Andy Valentine. Lots of his models will be hitting my website only (Not Etsy, but that is another story), which brings me to the next part of shop updates.
I will be an exhibitor at RAGECON this year! Reno Area Gaming Expo aka RAGECON, will be June 24-26 and I will be in the exhibition hall. Oh man even just typing this out is giving me anxiety because this will be the first convention that I will be doing featuring my 3D prints. I got 2 booths, so 12×6 in space and will be bringing a HeroQuest unpainted board, Trees galore, buildings, miniatures, bosses; all of which I still have to figure out how to display and box in a way that is quick and safe because let’s face it, miniatures are fragile, and no one wants a new purchase to break. I will also be bringing some fidget toys like the crystal dragons from Cinderwing3D, as well as Cosplay items from Andy Valentine, hopefully all the Critical Role stuffs I can print. As well as dice towers, which I am hopefully going to have my own created and enough printed to bring, dice boxes, maybe some dice bags, HP counters, etcetera.
I also still trying to sell my dual extruder Bibo touch aka Replicator. And I got my hands on the much-anticipated Palette V3! The Palette will be hooked up and feeding Sulu the Sovol V3. I think I have finally dialed in the Sovol, and got some nice tree prints from the new 3D Printed Tabletop Uncharted Lands campaign. But holy smokes am I feeling the convention approaching.
Then because of the recent Etsy transaction fee increase I have decided to re-do my website, update photos, ditch some categories (ditch a lot of categories), update the Partners list, add photos to the category’s lists, and really just try to update the vibe and I’m feeling pretty good about how it is looking. Reasoning for this is I am tired of Etsy charging so much in fees that I literally am not making any money from my sales on that site. As a small business we are supposed to be getting a commercial discount on shipping fees, which we pay for. But if we look at the financials break down, it shows Etsy charging a shipping fee with is 5% of the shipping charges. So really part of that discount a small business gets for the commercial pricing, Etsy just decides to charge then we are almost paying the same amount as if there wasn’t a commercial discount. Then offsite advertising. I pay for advertising, and if someone clicks on a listing that Etsy shows with “Ad by Etsy Seller”
Etsy then gets to keep 15% of the profits of that sale or any other sale for any other item from that customer on my listing page for 3 months! All because Etsy feels like that advert, that I pay for, was actually Etsy that made the sale for me. So because of the ridiculous amount of fees, I will be removing almost all if not all of my physical product off Etsy and it will only be available via my website for purchasing, with a target date of June 1.