Here are five ways you can revolutionize your business with 3D printing and Shapeways.

Turn a New Idea Into a Business Overnight

3D printing lets you quickly bring your ideas to life, and that’s exactly what Hint Lab did with its Lego-inspired jewelry. With Shapeways, you can launch a new product without spending a bunch of money upfront, while still offering custom sizes and materials.

Mass Produce Your Product and Make Changes on the Fly

As your business expands, Shapeways will be there every step of the way. Our ability to adapt, scale, and implement changes to mass-produced 3D-printed parts in just a few weeks allows a company like Kespry to ship hundreds of drones every quarter.

Use 3D Printing to Prototype A New Product

3D printing is a valuable tool even if your latest idea isn’t ready to hit the market. You can use Shapeways to prototype new products using strong and flexible materials, along with feedback from the community and our great customer service. That’s how the creators of PlingPong came up with their hit party game, and how Gut Shot Games developed its new tabletop game H.E.A.D Hunters.

3D Print The Finished Product Too

Shapeways is perfect for prototypes, but it’s also great for 3D printing your finished product. Design firm Tellart uses our platform to do both, developing new concepts and sometimes relying on us to create the final version too.

Create the Impossible

3D printing makes it possible to create objects that couldn’t exist any other way thanks to low costs and a high level of precision. That’s how Preceyes Surgical Robotics developed the robotics technology to help eye surgeons operate on a small scale that was previously impossible.

LEARN MORE

The post 5 Ways 3D Printing Can Revolutionize Your Business appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

While the overall 3D printing industry largely focuses on enterprises and industrial uses, Shapeways exists to take the power of that innovation and put it in the hands of people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. Unlike the early consumer 3D printing industry that focused on desktop printers, we created a service business model that enables creators to access the best and most innovative technologies without constantly buying new machines themselves.

EOS has been a key partner, providing the most innovative technology for selective laser sintering (SLS), or powder bed infusion. The company is the leading machine manufacturer and materials supplier for SLS industrial 3D printing, which is known for having the best repeatable quality result — key to serving our million-strong community of creators. EOS also gives Shapeways a competitive advantage beyond quality and consistency: access to material parameters unavailable from other technologies — in any color, size, or repeatable dimensional accuracy. The powder bed acts as a natural support structure for parts, enabling geometries that are difficult to print with stereolithography and fused filament fabrication. And quite simply, it is one of the most forgiving materials processes as the world of 3D creators rapidly expands – with versatility for tech accessories, jewelry, eyewear, scaled models, fixture, mechanical parts, and more.

Our factories house 19 industrial-sized EOS 3D systems that print thousands of products at once, running 24/7. With roughly 200,000 unique designs uploaded each month, we’re pioneering high-mix, high volume production.

As Adam Penna, EOS Sales and Marketing Lead put it, “We have supported Shapeways since its early days and we’re listening closely to them as a customer and to their community for improvement of processes involved in the digital value chain related to industrialized production as well as innovation on what’s next.” At 5 million products printed, we and EOS are celebrating the milestone — and then getting back to work building the accessible 3D printing service of the future.

The post Our Community Makes History: Congrats on 5 Million Strong & Flexible Prints! appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

As celebrated artist Doug Bucci debuts his Islet Necklace at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum this week, we’re proud to bring you a behind-the-scenes look at the necklace’s creation. Bucci’s ingenious creative process was inspired by a deeply meaningful, if unlikely source: his own diabetes-related medical data. Learn about how the artist turns that data into art jewelry and how Shapeways has played a part in bringing his work to life. Plus, get a rare view of the acclaimed necklace as it travels from powder bed to museum exhibition.

For a deeper look at how Bucci creates the gradient dye effect on the Islet Necklace, make sure to check out his expert tutorial on dyeing Strong & Flexible nylon plastic jewelry. And don’t miss the full range of the artist’s work on his website.

The post Acclaimed Artist Doug Bucci Reveals His Studio — And His Medical Data-Inspired Art Jewelry appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Ask any gardener, and they will tell you that planting seeds is only a fraction of the work in creating a beautiful garden. Getting the initial steps right is definitely important, but without regular watering, weeding, pruning, and fertilizing, the garden, which may be initially beautiful, will likely start to wither. At this point in our 7-part series on Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business, we’ve discussed the core tactics to get your jewelry business effectively up and running, but we’ve left an often overlooked exercise to last: relationship management.

Relationship management is a key part of maintaining engagement with existing customers and ensuring you stay top of mind for new opportunities that arise. It can at times seem secondary in importance, but maintaining active relationships with your business partners can be just as meaningful as activities that involve recruiting new customers. In the final part of our series, we’ll walk through 5 essential tips for effective account management.

1. Maintain a dynamic list of wholesale customers

The first step in maintaining your customer relationships is actually remembering whom your customers are. Keep a list with any pertinent contact information and relevant notes about customers themselves, idiosyncrasies in the way they do business, and their preferred ways of getting in touch. Also consider adding attributes to help to further categorize and target stockists for different collections, campaigns, or events. These might include:

• • Size
  • Social media reach
  • Geographic location
  • E-commerce vs. Brick & Mortar

Keep track of how many customers you have and what your gaps/growth opportunities are for future outreach.

2. Follow your customers on social media

Whether you like it or not, social media is now a core part of any marginally savvy business’s marketing and branding strategy. In the jewelry market in particular, Instagram and Pinterest are where trends are created and business plans are executed in a visible way. With your customers, then, it becomes important to keep up with what they are doing on social media.

We recommend checking profiles daily and watching Instagram stories. Stay abreast to changes in visual direction, new marketing campaigns, or patterns in the type of content or products they are posting. In addition to spectating, also engage with those profiles through likes, comments, and direct messages about specific posts. This activity alone can help to subtly keep you relevant in a brand’s mind. Often with smaller companies, the same person running social media is also the person running the whole operation. Even if that’s not the case, this engagement still builds a relationship with the social or marketing area of the company and opens you up more easily to potential opportunities for collaboration on joint social marketing efforts.

3. Notify your wholesale partners of any new product releases

Just as you want to be aware of what your customers are doing, you also want them to be aware of any new collections or product launches you are planning. Every new collection launch is an opportunity to reacquaint your customers with who you are as a brand and expose them to new product they may be interested in stocking and selling.

If you have a standard email to your broader customer list, be sure to send a more tailored email to each stockist, separate from your mass marketing push. Prepare a lookbook and utilize the same principles we discussed in our earlier segment on outreach. Start pitching your new collections 2-3 weeks prior to the main product or collection launch.

4. Don’t be afraid to stay in contact

As with any good relationship, communication is critical. Regular communication helps to create an ongoing dialogue, which eases the awkwardness that can sometimes accompany business relationships. Although you’re probably not going to be engaging with your customers with the frequency of a personal friend, it’s helpful to schedule calls regularly to get an idea of what short- or long-term promotional or strategic activities are expected and how you can be a part of them. If a stockist is local to where you live, we encourage you to stop by in person and schedule some face time with the buyer.

5. Be personally invested

Everything we’ve discussed in this series has been on a business-to-business level, but, in reality, every interaction you’re going to have with your customers is at a human-to-human level. To establish a sustainable business relationship, you really need to get back to the basics and get to know your customers.

Invest in learning their concerns, their excitements, and what they’re thinking about. Try to understand their motivations in making certain decisions or not. Don’t say things you don’t mean and don’t make promises you can’t keep.

The best way to generate trust and, ultimately, respect with a customer is to be genuinely engaged and interested in what they’re doing. Building a rapport that goes more than surface deep can be the basis for a truly sustainable business relationship and maybe, if you’re lucky, even a friendship.

Thank you for following us throughout our series. Wishing you all the best in incorporating these strategies into your business growth!

If you missed any part of the series, please check out the links below:

• Wholesalers and stockists

• Pricing strategy

• Line sheets

• Sales outreach

• Entrepreneurial negotiation tactics

• Contracts, pricing, and legal considerations for business

Contact us if you have any questions on growing your jewelry business

or have a bulk order that you’d like to scope out.

About the authors:

Ross Keong is a Strategic Sales Manager specializing in growth development for B2B users in the industries of jewelry, fashion, art, and design.

Virginia Gordon is the US Jewelry Community Manager, helping designers build a successful jewelry business using Shapeways and 3D printing

The post 7 Critical Steps to Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business – Part 7: Relationship Management appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Material Properties

“Are the material properties the same between regular Strong & Flexible and Premium Strong & Flexible?”

Yes. The same material and printing process is used for Premium as our regular Strong & Flexible plastic material.

Appearance

“But how different is it from regular Strong and Flexible? Do you have any comparison photos?”

Premium adds a sheen to your product, giving it a more finished look. Due to the way it is processed, Premium will also have more color consistency across the geometry of the part. We know that there’s nothing like seeing the product in person, but hopefully these pictures provide a bit more detail.

Orchid Bracelet by Collected Edition

Black Strong & Flexible (left) and Premium Black Strong & Flexible (right)

Bracelet Bluups ORIGAMI R by Bluups

Black Strong & Flexible (left) and Premium Black Strong & Flexible (right)

Black Strong & Flexible (left) and Premium Black Strong & Flexible (right)

The sheen is more subtle for White. However, if you do any post-processing on your own, such as dyeing for your own custom color, your product will have much better color consistency with Premium. Additionally, you can expect the product to have a bit of sheen, as shown with the Black.

Feel & Surface Roughness

“How much smoother is Premium?”

Just saying Premium is smoother is vague. We get it. To quantify how much smoother Premium really is, we did some surface roughness tests.

A surface roughness tester quantifies the texture of a surface by measuring the distance between the peaks and valleys. The larger the distance and the higher the value, the rougher the surface. Small values indicate a smoother surface.

Surface roughness is measured by its Ra value. Ra is the average of these distances between the peaks and values on the surface to its “mean line.” You can think of the mean line as center line between the peaks and values.

We took 6 measurements on each sample. The averages of these values can be seen in the table below.

But so what? What does this mean?

Looking at the values in the table above, the Ra of Premium measured around 5 micrometers whereas regular Strong & Flexible measured around 10 micrometers. This means that in comparison to Strong & Flexible, Premium is about twice as smooth.

Dimensional Accuracy

“Is the dimensional accuracy different for Premium Strong & Flexible?”

We also tested the effect of our Premium finishing on the dimensional accuracy of the part by measuring multiple dimensions both before and after post-processing. Six measurements were taken on six different parts.

On average, the parts decreased in size by 0.9mm. The maximum material removed was 0.1mm.

We recommend slightly scaling up your design to account for this difference if dimensional accuracy is important for your product’s application.

Detail Level

“Do you lose more detail with Premium?”

Although the dimensional accuracy changes slightly with Premium, we did not notice any visible difference in details. Both embossed and engraved details looked very similar before and after finishing.

PremiumWhite S&F (Left) and White S&F (right)

Painting

“How is the surface for painting?”

We had a suspicion that Premium Strong & Flexible would be better for painting. After all, the surface is smoother and less porous.

After a quick test using acrylic paints, no noticeable difference was seen between Strong and Flexible and Premium Strong and Flexible. The paint seem to apply about the same and there was no noticeable visual difference. The picture below shows the surface with one layer of paint. However, we encourage you to test it out for yourselves!

Bracelet Bluups ORIGAMI R by Bluups
Black Strong & Flexible (left) and Premium Black (right)

We hope this was informative and answered your most pressing questions. Now, go test it out and tell us what you think!

The post Your Questions Answered: Premium Strong & Flexible Nylon Plastic appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Your work appears to have come from another world, but it’s very rooted in basic, familiar forms. Can you describe the process that turns kale into Kale, a cylinder into Decay?

Agave, printed in Shapeways’ White, Strong & Flexible. 9.7 x 9.7 x 4.5 in.

Much of my work is about creating complexity from a simple starting point. The pieces in the show are grouped into four different categories, according to the way this happens.

In the Growth and Decay series, I begin with simple forms and subject them to simulated forces to change them into something interesting.

In Decay, the starting form is a cylinder, which is subjected to an external simulated-gravity, causing it to partially buckle. In Growth, the forces are internal expansions which cause simple shapes like disks and cylinders to twist and expand in unpredictable ways.

In the other two series of pieces, Pattern and Symmetry, I start with a small, simple 3-dimensional shape, and force that motif to repeat in space. The repetition happens either by simple patterning over a surface, or by applying various reflections and rotations.

Crumple, printed in Shapeways’ White, Strong & Flexible. 4 x 4 x 23.2 in.

Can you describe the genesis of your art? Was it an outgrowth of your mathematical research, or did you want to be an artist all along? How did 3D printing play a part?

I did have some interest in drawing and painting when I was young, but didn’t do much about it until recent years.

I started experimenting with 3D printing primarily as a way to create classroom demonstration models in my university classes. Shortly after that, I started co-teaching classes on 3D design with some of our art faculty, and that led me to doing some artistic explorations on my own.

Since then I’ve really become enamored with the idea of using mathematics as a tool for design. 3D printing is the only technology that can turn my designs into physical realities.

How did your upcoming exhibition at MorYork come about? What’s the primary theme or focus on the show?

MorYork is the studio and gallery of artist Clare Graham. Clare had seen my work before, and contacted me several years ago about doing a series of polyhedra. Since then we’ve become friends, and a few months ago he offered to show my work in his gallery.

Tell us about why you chose the White Strong & Flexible nylon plastic material to bring your designs to life.

Half of the pieces in the show are White Strong & Flexible, and half are full color sandstone. Both of those are available in large enough sizes for gallery pieces. WSF is ideal for lampshades, because of its low weight and translucency. Sandstone has the advantage of being available in full color. Its higher weight gives it a solid feel, which is desirable for sculptural pieces.

Where can we find your work, outside MorYork?

I post most of my work on my website and at my shapeways shop, www.shapeways.com/shops/Bachman.

Trefoiled, printed in Shapeways’ Coated Full Color Sandstone. 9.1 x 9.5 x 4.5 in.

Any advice for the many people who are coming into their own as artists, thanks to 3D printing?

3D printing allows us to create objects with complex geometries, which are not possible to fabricate in any other way. However, to really take advantage of this power you have to develop proficiency with some design software, just like the way an aspiring painter has to master the use of a paintbrush. Each software package has strengths and weaknesses, so do a little research first to find one that suits your artistic practices.

If you’ll be in Los Angeles on Nov. 10, don’t miss opening night of David’s exhibition. All the details can be found here.

Cover image:
Hyperbole
Shapeways’ White, Strong & Flexible
10.9 x 11.4 x 5.9 in.

The post Artist David Bachman Unlocks the Secret Identities of Everyday Objects appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

As Halloween approaches, we wanted to address one of the scarier parts of running a business: ensuring you have adequate legal protection for yourself and your business. In part 6 of our 7-part series on Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business, we’re enlisting Shapeways’ own IP and General Counsel, Michael Weinberg, to help. We had a Q & A, during which we talked through the legal considerations involved with transitioning from B2C to B2B, contracts, conflict resolution, and finding legal counsel for your business. Below, you’ll find an abbreviated transcript of our conversation.

Ross: For a lot of small business owners, the transition from business-to-consumer to business-to-business can be a really daunting task with a lot of uncertainty. From a legal perspective, what are some of the core considerations you would suggest to a small business owner who’s making that transition?

Michael:  The biggest thing to remember when you’re switching from B2C to B2B is that all of a sudden, you’re going from selling small numbers of things to many people to having one or a couple large transactions. That means that documentation and thinking through everything that’s involved with the transaction is more important. Because you have one transaction,  you want to make sure you get it right. If something goes wrong, there’s a lot of money on the line, there’s potentially a lot of merchandise on the line, and so, it’s worth pausing and taking the time to think through the details.

The most important part of that is the contract you have. Whereas you probably did not have a contract with every customer that you were selling things to, you probably do want to think about having a contract with every company you’re selling to. At the front end, it really helps you make sure that you and that company are on the same page. At the back end, if something goes wrong, you can go back to that beginning and say, ‘no, no, we agreed on this at the beginning, we agreed on this before we were fighting, we decided this is the way it was going to work, and so, this is what we need to do.’

Especially as you’re dealing with a larger company, where you’re talking to a couple different people or a whole [legal] apparatus on their side, you want to make sure you’re prepared.

Ross:  On the topic of contracts, what are some of the key items to be aware of when writing your own contract for another business or when accepting a contract from another business? For example, what types of things do you need to make sure are actually in writing?

Michael:  When you’re thinking about a contract, you really need to consider what’s written down. You can have all sorts of conversations, you can all have all sorts of assurances that this or that is going to happen, but if it is important, make sure that it’s written down.

If the person you’re working with recognizes that something is important but is not willing to write it down, that’s a giant red flag. If you think you have a deal that you’ve worked out with someone and they’re not willing to write it down, that means you probably don’t really have that deal.

Make sure to write down the obvious items like prices and quantities, make sure you know what the timetable is, when you need to deliver these things, what happens when they get sold, what the payment schedule is, and what happens if they don’t get sold.

A big part of the contract is agreeing in advance what happens if things go wrong. You’re often in this moment where you’re thinking you have this great opportunity and it’s going to be fantastic; but sometimes, there’s value to stepping back and and thinking a little bit like a lawyer. Say to yourself, ‘what are the two or three ways that this could go wrong?’ and make sure that you have something which addresses those situations written in the contract. If that thing happens, it’s really easy to show we agreed about this in advance, this is how it’s going to work, and we can already work through it. The core advice really is that if something is really important, if you’ve even talked about it or discussed it, make sure it’s written down.

If you get to a point where that contract needs to be challenged, e.g., I assert you aren’t paying me or you assert I’m not delivering what you need to be delivered, it’s the written words on that contract that are going to be most important. That’s going to be what’s really looked at and what’s gonna be the core of a legal challenge. Even in a pre-legal challenge, that contract is what people are going to be using.

Ross:  What happens in the situation that those things are not actually executed? For example within the small business world, particularly within jewelry and and other types of fashion transactions, larger companies often have a reputation of preying on smaller companies by simply not paying.

For example, a common business practice is to arrange payment with payment terms of net 30, 60, 90, etc. If that payment doesn’t actually happen at the end of that period, what do you do?

Michael: You have this contract with all these terms you’ve worked out and all of a sudden, one of them is violated. It can be really frustrating. The ultimate remedy is to bring the other person to court and say, ‘we agreed on this contract, you’re violating the term, I’m gonna sue you.’ Basically, when you sue someone in that situation, you’re suing so that they make you whole again — they fix whatever they failed to do. While this is the ultimate threat, it’s important to remember that that’s a threat and an inconvenience for everyone involved.

While sometimes it might take going all the way to court, sometimes it may just take discussing and saying, ‘you’re in violation of the terms of this contract. We can go to court if we have to, but it’ll be faster and cheaper to just resolve this and figure out a way to make it work.’ Going to your partner and saying, ‘we have a contract, these are the terms, you’re in violation, I need you to fix this’ is a really important first step. If they refuse to fix it at that point, then you need to start thinking about being more serious about bringing them to court. Sometimes it’ll be small claims court because that’s how much money is involved, sometimes it can be a higher level.

You have to remember, though, that at every step of the way, there’s an opportunity to work it out and avoid going through the entire legal system. Especially if you’re dealing with a big company, it also costs them a lot of money to go to court. You shouldn’t frivolously threaten people with lawsuits; but, if you really have a claim and they’ve really violated the contract, telling them that you’re going to bring them to court and sending them the initial documents creates an opportunity for that other company to say, ‘whether or not we think they were right or wrong, maybe it’s cheaper to just settle this.’

The takeaway is that it’s not a binary thing: it’s not everything is fine, or we’re in a year of litigation. If things go wrong, we may have to go to court, but let’s work things out so we don’t have to go that far.

Ross: Are there any other preemptive protections that small businesses should be thinking about as they’re preparing these contracts or preparing to engage with other businesses?

Michael: First and foremost is getting everything in writing, but the other thing to remember is that you’re part of a community. If you’re working with or thinking about working with someone, there  may be someone else in your community who’s had that experience already. Ask around about whether that company pays on time or is always late, and figure out what you can learn before you get involved. Understanding a company’s reputation in your community is really important.

On the flip side, if you are having problems with that company and you don’t want to go to court, one of the solutions is making sure that other people in your community understand that you’re having problems. That reputation is important to the community and if they are really failing to meet their expectations with you,  you should share that with people.

Ross: The last question I have for you today is regarding legal counsel itself. When is it actually appropriate for a business to seek out legal counsel and what are some of the ways that a small business owner could go about finding an appropriate legal counsel to represent them?

Michael:  Seeking legal counsel if you don’t already have it is a big step, primarily because of the associated costs.  It’s possible that if you bring a lawsuit and win, you can get damages that cover your costs. If nothing else, though, it’s going to cost you some money upfront. It’s not something that you should do lightly; however, if it affects an important part of your business, it’s something that you should consider.  

There are a couple ways to find lawyers who can help you. If there’s a trade association or another group of people who are in your industry, they’ll probably be able to refer you to lawyers that people in your group have worked with before. You can also call up your local Bar Association for referral lists.

Very often, if you get connected with a lawyer, you’ll be able to talk to them first and outline the situation. Before they start charging you money, they should be able to evaluate what’s happening and give you an honest answer as to what your chances are of winning and what it will really cost to do it.

Another option is legal clinics. If you’re in a business, you should look around at law schools that are in your area, because they may have low cost or pro bono help where law students and attorneys who supervise them can walk you through straightforward transactions or disputes.  

Contact us if you have any questions on growing your jewelry business

or have a bulk order that you’d like to scope out.

About the authors:
Ross Keong is a Strategic Sales Manager specializing in growth development for B2B users in the industries of jewelry, fashion, art, and design.

Virginia Gordon is the US Jewelry Community Manager, helping designers build a successful jewelry business using Shapeways and 3D printing

The post 7 Critical Steps to Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business – Part 6: Legal Protections appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

As a small business owner, being an effective negotiator can sometimes make the difference between running a profitable business and not. In part 5 of our 7-part series on Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business, we’ll provide you with the tactics to equip yourself for a negotiation from start to finish.

1. General Considerations Around a Negotiation

Before digging into the tactical preparation for your negotiation, a critical exercise is to take a step back and establish the high-level goals of the conversation. By consciously framing the negotiation and situation, you can be more aware of distractors that make you less effective as a negotiator.

Focus on building trust and relationships

A core tenant of small business negotiation in particular is to focus on building trust and relationships through the negotiation. Generally, you’re not only setting up a one-time deal, but also laying a foundation for how you are going to work with a partner into the future, whether that’s a supplier, a buyer, or a collaborator. Be conscious of actions which build trust and those that diminish it; be intentional and honest with your capabilities as well as your limitations; and above all, avoid just appealing to what you think the other party wants to hear. Good negotiation requires actual dialogue.

Keep your emotions and ego in check

During a negotiation, things can get heated and you may be reduced to your basic animalistic instincts in many ways. A common result of this is mental traps and assumptions, often referred to as cognitive biases. These biases cloud logical judgment and decision making by letting our emotions and egos get the best of us. Review the list below (via Business Insider) and try to think through potential biases you may encounter going into a discussion.

Being thoughtful about this list before a negotiation can make you aware of these biases when they happen and to prepare mental countermeasures. The first time you catch yourself and pivot on one of these is always a pat-yourself-on-the-back moment.

2. Preparing for a Negotiation

While the negotiation itself is obviously where the deal-making actually happens, much of the success or failure of a negotiation is determined by the tactical preparation that takes place beforehand. Having a game plan equips you with an arsenal of information to make insightful decisions and to control the conversation.

Establish your position

Before stepping into a negotiation, you’ll want to consider what you want to have when you step out of it, i.e., you need to determine what is the ideal outcome you’d like to achieve. In a negotiation with a buyer, for example, what order value or margin dollars are you aiming for? What’s the ideal production lead time or credit term agreement? As you consider the different variables at stake in the conversation, you’ll also want to rank them in order of importance to you and your business. Creating a list of these variables can help to establish your bargaining chips for the negotiation and help you define which are more or less expendable to you.

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)

Once you have a good sense of the variables of the negotiation, you’ll want to establish your acceptable outcome ranges. In this sense, you’re considering the best case and worst case that you’re willing to take for each item you’re negotiating. The best-case scenario is the easy part. This likely includes the prices, lead times, etc. that you envisioned when creating the list of variables to begin with. The worst case scenario, or the BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), can be a bit more involved.

The BATNA is the absolute minimum agreement that you would be willing to accept in a negotiation. It is a jargon-y way of saying: “what would be your next best option or opportunity cost if you stepped away from a deal?”

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)

Example: If you are negotiating over unit-pricing for a wholesale order where the cost to produce a ring is $25 and your wholesale markup is $40 (total WSP of $65), your BATNA would be $25.01. Any lower and you would be in the same position or worse than not selling the rings at all. One thing to note about this example is that it excludes considerations beyond price. In reality, your BATNA should account for less tangible items such as time and effort spent on producing the order rather than on other business activity. It should also take into account your target margin across all of your sales.

Calculating your BATNAs during the preparation phase of the negotiation can prevent you from agreeing to a deal which puts you into a position that’s actually worse than not having any deal at all.

Anticipate all potential scenarios

As with any debate or rhetorical speech intended to persuade, anticipating areas of concern or argument is also critical with negotiations. Although you can’t think of every possible scenario that could come up, try to anticipate the most likely ones and walk through how you would approach them. This works in conjunction with the cognitive bias exercise we discussed before, but helps to prepare for the more tangible aspects of the conversation. Identifying the most favorable potential scenarios can also help you to steer the conversation toward those scenarios.

Create an agenda

The last step of negotiation preparation is to create an agenda of the topics you want to cover and the order in which you want to cover them. Creating an agenda ensures you don’t miss discussing a major topic, but also helps to establish a framework for the conversation. Some items are inevitably more important to you than others and the same goes for your negotiating partner. Being strategic about when to ask for more of one thing or concede another is key to keep in mind within the larger conversation.

3. Navigating a Negotiation

Establish the agenda

Once the negotiation begins, the first thing you’ll want to do is establish the agenda that you created before the meeting. If there is any disagreement on the sequence, decide on an order of topics together — this can sometimes be a mini-negotiation in and of itself. Be clear on the ultimate objectives of the meeting, i.e., what items you want to have agreement on once you each walk away from the negotiating table.

ZOPA (Zone of Potential Agreement)

Next, you’ll want to find your way as quickly as possible into what’s called the ZOPA (Zone of Potential Agreement). ZOPA is another piece of negotiation jargon, which refers to the area between two parties’ BATNAs.

ZOPA (Zone of Potential Agreement)

As you’ll recall, the BATNA is the absolute minimum required by either party to reach agreement. If you’re looking at two parties’ outcome ranges, the area between a buyer’s and seller’s BATNA is where you would actually anticipate reaching an agreement. As you negotiate, you are trying to get as far as possible towards the outer limit of the ZOPA as possible.

The ZOPA does imply that there is actually overlap between the two BATNAs; sometimes this isn’t the case. In those situations, the best outcome for both parties is to walk away from the deal.

Dig into your partner’s interests and motivations

The only real way to determine the ZOPA is to ask questions. To get an idea of where your negotiating partner’s BATNA lies, you’ll need to understand their interests and motivations. On top of that, you’ll want to figure out which of those interests and motivations are most important to them. Just as you went through the exercise of establishing a ranking of your own interests before the meeting, you’ll want to work towards a similar ranking of important items for your partner as well. The discrepancy between what you find important and what your partner finds important is the critical information you need to move a negotiation in your favor. For example, if lead time is of primary importance to the buyer, but is less a factor for you, you know you can concede a bit to their lead time demands in exchange for something that’s more important to you.

People often believe that good negotiators simply make demands and play hardball, but the true masters of the art are those who simply know how to ask the right questions, and when. Focus on asking open questions — that is, questions without a binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer — as these will open you to the most information.

Get to the core of why your partner is motivated to act in a certain way and what you have to offer to address those motivations. This calls to a focus on value creation, where you are scoping out your shared interests and how you can each benefit from working together.

Create solutions and trading packages

Taking into consideration what you learn from your exploration, start to create solutions and trading packages. Using “If…then” statements, you’re going to scope out what your partner is actually open to and move toward a resolution. Continuing on the lead time insight from the last example, you might propose: “If you’d like us to shorten our standard lead time to meet your holiday timeline, then we would request a revision of credit terms from n/30 to n/15. Is that something you would feel comfortable with?”

Creating theoretical packages like this decreases uncertainty and generates possible solutions without immediately committing to them.

Avoid compromise

The final critical tip for navigating the negotiation is to avoid compromise. Not every negotiation works out, and that’s okay. Don’t be afraid to walk away from a deal if it isn’t creating the value that you need it to. Be aware of your cognitive biases, keep your BATNA top of mind, and try to remain as objective as you can.

4. Closing the Deal

Assuming you do reach an agreement with one of the packages you created, the final step is to close the deal. First, you’ll want to lock down the order itself – when to expect it to be placed, the details of price and discounts, lead time, payment terms, etc. Next, establish any action items for moving forward, define the respective owner(s) of each item, and agree on its deadline. Finally, summarize, clarify, and document the discussion for both parties.

Any time a negotiation occurs, it’s best to send an email the same day with meeting minutes to ensure both sides are on the same page.

Stay tuned for the next part of our series, where we’ll sit down with Shapeways’ General Counsel, Michael Weinberg, to talk through legal considerations for transitioning from B2C to B2B.

Contact us if you have any questions on growing your jewelry business or have a bulk order that you’d like to scope out.

About the authors:
Ross Keong is a Strategic Sales Manager specializing in growth development for B2B users in the industries of jewelry, fashion, art, and design.

Virginia Gordon is the US Jewelry Community Manager, helping designers build a successful jewelry business using Shapeways and 3D printing

The post 7 Critical Steps to Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business – Part 5: Negotiation 101 appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Part 4: 5 Essential Tactics for Outbound Selling to Jewelry Buyers

The word ‘salesman’ has some of the worst connotations of any profession. It usually conjures up images of snake oil or used car lots or grease-based hair products. The fact is, though, that to run an effective business, you have to learn how to sell your brand and your product. For most of us, it’s not something that comes naturally, but implementing some basic tactics can help to get you in the habit of effective selling behaviors. You may be surprised to know that these have nothing to do with lying or over-promising, but rather, they focus on organization and thoughtful presentation.

In this fourth part of our 7-part series on Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business, we’ll walk through the considerations for an effective outreach campaign to your wholesalers and stockists. If you’ve been following along with the series to this point and are confident in your line sheet  and initial list of stockists, you’re ready to move onto actually selling and making money for your business.

1. Set an Outreach Campaign Schedule

Establishing an outreach schedule is the best way to keep yourself focused and on-track in the whirlwind of various forms of contact during the outreach process. Creating this plan of attack is an important part of a consistent and well-organized strategy. Starting with your initial list of 10-15 leads to target, plan out when and how you are going to make contact with each stockist on your list.

For example:

• October 1: Send initial outreach email
• October 4: Send follow-up email
• October 10: Make follow-up call
• October 15: Make follow-up call and send email

We’ll discuss follow-up a bit more later in this article. The thing to remember here is to keep yourself accountable to the schedule. Block off time in your calendar and make sure that you follow through.

2. Create a Tracking System

When juggling interactions with 10-15 contacts at once, things can start to get a bit messy. Take five minutes to set up a simple spreadsheet in Google sheets or Excel, which includes a row for each contact and columns to capture the date of each touchpoint, the type of contact you made, whether that resulted in a response, and any action items from the response. You can download a template for a simple tracking document here.

This will allow you to keep track of whether you have emailed, called, or met up with each potential buyer. This should not only help you to stay organized, but also to get a sense of what’s working for you and what’s not. With data on your sales activity, you can speed up and optimize your sales cycle. Play around with different timing and combinations of activity to see what’s most effective for you.

3. Digital Outreach

Digital outreach is the most common way to contact prospective buyers and mostly takes the form of a cover letter-style outbound email.

This email is an incredibly limited opportunity to present your product. Expect a buyer to spend about 5-20 seconds looking at the body of the email. Because of this brief window, you want to keep the message as concise, relevant, and direct as possible.

Top takeaways for email outreach:

• Personalize each email to the specific buyer and speak to that buyer’s needs.
• Focus on pushing value that your products add to their business rather than what value they can add to yours.
• Keep the subject line of the email direct. Address what type of jewelry you make and request a response, e.g., “Response Requested: XYZ Jewelry SS 2018 (Succulents Reimagined)”
• The body of the email is your digital elevator pitch; you shouldn’t go into every little detail of your brand and product.
  • 1-2 sentence brief about your brand
  • 1-2 sentences about why your product should be interesting to the buyer and their customers. Consider gaps that it fills in the stockist’s current assortment or trend relevance.
• Clearly conclude with a call to action to either meet in person or have a call to discuss further
  • List a few dates and times when you are available
• Attach your look book, line sheet, and a link to your website/online store
• Include 3-5 compelling product photos in the body of the email. As the buyer is likely to skim the email, good photos are arguably the most important component of the outreach email. Including the images in the email body rather than as attachments reduces the steps between opening the email and seeing your product. Composing a photo grid of several images can be a good approach to this presentation.

Sample cover letter photo grid

Number 4: Physical Outreach

Physical outreach is generally a more effective selling method than email outreach, although it can involve more investment from a time and/or resource perspective. Sometimes that investment may be worth it for accelerating your sales cycle with a particular prospect. This type of outreach usually involves meeting buyers in person to present physical product samples or sending a mailer including physical versions of your digital outreach assets.

Meeting a buyer in person has the obvious advantages that you have a chance to talk about your product, answer questions in real time, do some true selling, and initiate a personal connection with the person on the other end.

Physical mailing, on the other hand, can be an interesting middle ground between email and a direct meet-up. Keep in mind is visual presentation – the packaging you use is your first marketing impression to the buyers. Make sure to make them curious enough to open the package and explore further. While you can just include the essential documents (cover letter, look book, line sheet), this is also an opportunity to send physical samples to stockists. Physical samples allow the buyer to actually take the time to engage with the product beyond pictures. As this can be expensive, make sure that the potential revenue/branding opportunity would really be worth the money you would be investing. Generally, you’ll want to use physical mailing of samples for only the top stores that you are targeting.

Number 5: Follow-up

You send out your initial email or letter, you don’t hear back from the buyer, and you decide that they must not have liked what they saw. While this is could be true, it’s also possible that vacation, a busy day, or countless other distractions kept them from writing back. Lack of follow-up is one of the biggest causes for lost sales. It’s driven by the feeling that you don’t want to bug the other person, or that you’re embarrassed to reach out again when they haven’t been responding to you. Until you hear the answer “no” you really don’t know for sure.

Persistent and direct follow-up is essential for selling your product. This can feel uncomfortable, it can feel like you’re being annoying, but push through those feelings and just do it. If you truly feel that your product could be useful and of value to the stockist, convince them why you feel that way. Persistence pays off.

Stay tuned for the next part of our series, where we’ll walk through the basics of effective entrepreneurial negotiation.

Contact us  if you have any questions on growing your jewelry business or have a bulk order that you’d like to scope out.

About the authors:
Ross Keong is a Strategic Sales Manager specializing in growth development for B2B users in the industries of jewelry, fashion, art, and design.

Virginia Gordon is the US Jewelry Community Manager, helping designers build a successful jewelry business using Shapeways and 3D printing

The post 7 Critical Steps to Growing a Profitable Jewelry Business, Part 4: Outbound Selling to Jewelry Buyers appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

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The post Our Best Material Finish Ever appeared first on Shapeways Blog.