Prepackaged standard quantities, or custom quantities

[philbish]

I am selling very small widgets. I sell anywhere from 50 to 600 per day. Most customers will order about 20 to 50. Some only order 1, or others order 200. They come in 5 different colors. They sell for about 30 cents each.

My question is, should I countinue to let the customer choose exactly the quantity the want, or should I sell packs of 20? If I were to sell packs of 20, I could have them counted out in China. It would save me a ton of time, because I can easily spend an hour each day counting out, and inserting these widgets into bags.

Just thought I'd get your feedback on this...

[wavebird23]

I would recommend you sell the widgets in packs of twenty, because it would make it a lot easier on you, and you would get more profit in the long run. Good luck with your business!

[derekwong28]

If you spend too much time in processing each order, you would not have time in promoting you web site or finding new products. To sell a single widget at $0.3 is just not worth it.

[Joop]

Do you have discounting on the site aswell? So customers get the widgets cheaper if the buy 20, 50, 100 etc..

[bcc1234]

I they are not assorted and you let people pick colors then you might want to implement a minimum order on your site. So people could pick different quantities of different colors, but the minimum total number would be 20. That won't let you stop counting, but at least will stop people from placing 30 cent orders.

[Leosghost]

sell them in 20's ..count em by weight ..like small change ...
From China you'd have extra shipping costs ..

[philbish]

Yeah there would be extra shipping costs involved... I am already ordering from china so maybe the manufactuer would be interested in bagging them for an extra fee.

I could always just invest in a really precise scale.

[martyt]

I've found that offering them in quantities slightly different than my competitors seems to result in more sales. Most competitors offer them by the dozen. I sell in packs of 10 or 25 or by the gross (with appropriate discounting as the quantity goes up).

If you are already selling at a discounted price, it'll be hard to package them and cut the price even further. But customers expect to get a break when they buy in quantity.