Shipping to North America Only
We've all gotten used to Amazon's same-day shipping and 2-day delivery times. While it's great on the receiving end, living up to those expectations for a two-person company is daunting. All of the enclosures are manufactured and packed by hand in an actual Greensboro NC garage by 3D printing enthusiasts just like yourself, not made in a factory overseas and stored in regional warehouses.
While most orders are processed in 1 or 2 days, during peak times it can take up to 3 business days to process your order, and even longer if you've ordered custom modifications. We are happy to issue a refund if this isn't fast enough. Note that we don't offshore support, and answer each question ourselves during office hours 9AM-5PM Monday through Friday. If you place an order and then immediately start filling out the contact form every few hours that will not make your package ship faster, it just means instead of shipping we're answering support tickets!
The other issue is shipping costs. Amazon Prime has conditioned people to want free shipping, but our enclosures are large and heavy, more like shipping furniture. We lose money overall on shipping, but there's simply no way to get shipping costs any lower without raising prices and then offering "free" shipping. This way you at least know the real cost of the shipping.
Discounts
The other problem in online retail is the ubiquitous discount code. The idea is simple: jack up prices by 25%, and then offer 25% discounts. You see the codes everywhere these days, from shoes, to paint, to makeup. What's not to like?
The problem is twofold. First, we don't have sales staff sitting around to negotiate discounts and generate codes. Every minute we have to spend answering questions about discounts is a minute not spent on designing new enclosures, improving existing ones, and getting orders out the door.
The other problem is those large discounts are offered on Chinese-made products with huge profit margins. They take an item that costs $5 to make, offer 25% discounts and free shipping and they can still get a 75% profit margin.
On the other hand, our niche products are made in the US from premium US-made acrylic and filament and cut on an industrial US-made laser. They come with support and a 30-day money-back guarantee, priced at the minimum we can charge and still make enough money to come out with new models.
But what about schools, libraries, non-profits and a host of other customers who would like discounts? Sorry, but we have priced the products as low as we can and still stay in business. Selling things at cost is simply not a good business model.
In conclusion, sorry we don’t do business like the giant brands. Maybe someday we’ll hire a marketing consultant, but for now, we’ll have to make do shipping a premium product at a fair price.
Best regards,
--Michael