80 replies to this topic

[pyrodude]

on that note ill change the 'for pyrotechnic use' part and replace it with something else.
Cheers for your help kyle

[BurlHorse]

Hey there,

Just my humble opinion, but trying to put a mask on what you are providing to the public en`Masse, could be construed as mail fraud. Trying to tell the authorities that the silver salute tubes are "really" fingers for a tin man costume for halloween.... Oh, the end plugs, those are for aquarium leaks.....etc, etc, etc.

I am not critisizing you as a person or as a potential business owner, however, to further the cause of your folks getting legitimate recognition as hobbyist's, I don't think the first thing you would advertise is Salute or shell materials....trust me, no one is going to believe your making 2.5" tall fountains.

I've learned alot in many business endevours, I will tell you that you need a clearly detailed plan (Business) and alot of research before putting anything on the web for anyone to see, much less sell, additionally, the credibility of a geocities site is dubious at best. There are e-commerce hosting plans, by tens of thousands of providers for you to choose from, at barely what a nice dinner out on the town costs per month.

I would get the entire Plan developed, then the website built on your local machine, test it til it hurts ( Spell check it )and even then only put it out there for anyone to see after you know it's bullet proof. By bullet proof I mean from all fronts, the hackers*, the competition ( the images you have up are someone elses "intellectual" property (United Nuclear) , while you may have asked to use them, do you have anything in writing, legal writing? If not, then he can decide at any moment he chooses to sue you for copyright infringement! ) the suppliers? the shipping? the authorities? Theres alot to running any business and I wish not to discourage you but humbly point out that you are already jumping the gun if you haven't done your homework.

As was stated earlier on in this thread, if the classic "Hold Harmless" agreement has no legal weight in the UK, what kind of personal and business liability insurance are you going to carry? Can you even get it? Again, you've jumped the gun if you have not considered this. As a society, unfortunately, a litiguous one, if little johnny burns his fingers your going to be held accountable at some level. If you improperly pack something and it breaks open en route to wherever, lets say, Lead Tetra oxide for an extreme example, how many people are you liable to? The delivery guy who just snarfed up enough orange powder to ruin his life, all the people who's packages were contaminated and thus determined by the authorities have to be destroyed, one of which unfortunatley had an artifact from the Sahara desert worth 250,000.00 dollars. You may have done eveything right, but the box got smashed by another package, you might still be liable for all of it......etc, etc, etc.

You see the list can go on and on, so get your plan done first, then do it again, test your plan against any of the scenarios I just listed, will the business survive? As a fair and reputable business person, are you prepared to deal with these scenario's? Again, I mean not to discourage you, but to disuade you from making some classic business/pyro, pyro/business mistakes.

Regards, If I can help, just ask

Stay Green,

Bear

* We just had a huge problem with being hacked, first they hacked our yahoo account, with that they were able to add an e-mail address to our pay-pal account, then they advertised something on E-bay by hacking that account too, (remember this.... LoNGPasswords123456 are hard to hack) , a 4-wheeler for 3,500.00 dollars, the person who bought it and then paid for it, lucky for him, got our nifty neato thank you mail (autoresponder) that the wanna be rich hacker did not take the time to remove, anyway the buyer got the e-mail, called paypal and put the funds on hold, luckily, the little hacker puke did not have a chance to snatch the cash before the buyer caught on. Technically it looked like a legit e-bay auction by us, but guess who would have had to buy a 4-wheeler for the buyer, yea, me. Just a side note to all of the above. The buyer got all his money back, the feds are trying to find the hacker puke, and all parties are ok........

[pyrodude]

hiya,
i origionally did this website as a business studies project and so have drawn up a business plan and numerous other things with the help of my business studies teacher. I understand what you mean about the pictures so i will have to take my own if my camera can manage that and i will make sure it is extremely well packaged and if sonething does happen i will just have to take responsibility for it.
I will be taking the website offline then now till it is finished and will post back when it is finished to make sure there are no more mistakes!!
Cheers Kyle

[Stuart]

I think you should make it very discreate e.g. instead of,
These are plastic 2" shells for pyrotechnics
put
These are plastic 2" hemis.
The moment a pyro see's a picture and that description he (or she) know's what it is. The rest of the public dont. Also, if you phrase the everything like that instead of saying this is a pyro supplier, you will then far more likely to have real pyros buying instead of some kewl prat.

If any of that make's sense

Stuart

[pyrodude]

Thanks for the advice stuart. I suppose that is really just common sense but its too late to be thinking have you any ideas what i should change the name of the website to then?

[Loci]

Something totally non related perpaps, like

www.KylesHappyTreeFriends.co.uk

Use your imagination

Oh, another thing you *COULD* do is to do it all on th sly, and not advertise anything etc But I don't recomend it really.

Edited by Loci, 05 February 2004 - 10:51 PM.

[BurlHorse]

Good,

Good that you worked on a business plan too, just refine it. I don't know if I agree with calling it anything other than what it is, just be safe and sane about your choice of domain names, you will have to live with it, for at least a year anyway...

Credibility is based on honesty and www.treehuggers.com surely is not honestly what your website will be for. That really is just inviting prying eyes to come and find out what all the secrecy is all about. No Slam on the person who suggested that, but e-commerce is all about honesty, safe transactions, and it's hard enough to get people to buy anything via the web, so I digress to my earlier post, as you build it, develop it and refine it, the name will come to you.

Best of luck to you,

Stay Green,

Bear

[Stuart]

Considering many pyro's are linked through this forum or rec.pyrotechnics and the like, you could (or we as the case my be) advertise by word of mouth. You domin could be www.paper-tubes-and-plastic-hemis.com, credible but discrete

Stuart

Edited by Stuart, 06 February 2004 - 06:49 AM.

[pyrodude]

yeah i probably will change the domain name and hosting but to something which is slightly smaller than Stuarts idea cause thats way too long!!!!

ive finished the price lists now so if you want to noe the particular price of an item just ask through this forum do not PM me bout pricing

Edited by pyrodude, 06 February 2004 - 09:35 PM.

[Loci]

perhaps you could e-mail the price list of everything to me?

genius.loci@Btopenworld.com

[BurlHorse]

yeah i probably will change the domain name and hosting but to something which is slightly smaller than Stuarts idea cause thats way too long!!!!

ive finished the price lists now so if you want to noe the particular price of an item just ask through this forum do not PM me bout pricing

Hmmm, Pyrodude,

Guess you've decided on a different approach. Take a look at one of my/our sites.

(Richard, or other moderators, Please don't take this as a shameless plug for our site, it's merely a tool for this post.)

In His Image - Original Christian Art

This is a site that my signifigant other and I have been developing and successfully selling her art work on. It may give you an idea on how to start a credible and successful business, as well as what a web site IMHO could/should look like as a bare minimum before anyone sees it.. It is not pyro related in any way, just an example for you to learn from. Another hurdle you will have to jump if you really want your business to fly is learning HTML and how Meta Tags Work for the seach engines. My forte` is Web development and search engines optimization. I have managed to get this site listed up in the first 1 or 2 listings on google, Yahoo, etc. (Do a search on google with the keywords "Original Christian Art" or "Linda Stewart" ) and you will see what 3 painstaking years of hard coding and work has accomplished.

While it is not pyro related, it has many of the same challenges that you will have to deal with, I.E; I need supplies to produce the product, I need time to take the pictures and manipulate the images and text. ( catering to a certain clientel as you will be with Pyro Supplies) to make the product. I now have a product to sell, I need to to sell AND get Paid for that product, I have to get that product to the customer and that customer Ideally needs to be happy with it. I need to let the masses know that the product is available and use craft shows, revivals and of course the web to accomplish this.

Our service is outstanding, we talk to, but more importantly, LISTEN to our customers and we have had 3 complaints in the last 3 years, all due to misunderstandings for the matte colors available for certain prints, the customers fault, but we pass on finger pointing and just keep them happy, resulting in repeat customers and great recommendations/referals to us or our site(s).

Dude, my point is.... clearly from the last couple of posts, you are going to try and sell regardless of the consequences. Bad Mojo bud, IMHO. There is very little money to be made in the pyro industry in general because of all the business related pitfalls, Hazmat, Liability, Legalities, furthermore, supply of Chemicals. How are you planning to mark up a reasonable profit margin on Chemicals that from what I hear, over there are priced like gold when the product should be the price of silver? I dunno, I wish you well, but I am going to back away from this thread, I was'nt asked for advice anyway, so who made it my business right? I wish you well and hope you are successful. I hope you can glean some useful info from my posts.

Regards, Stay Green and outta the pokey,

Bear

[pyrodude]

Thanks burlhorse,
i have overcome the shipping problems and hazmat i understand it could be difficult to sell items in this country at a profit and as this was part of a business studies project at first and saw that stuff was hard to get in this country by newbies and some people who have been in the pyro industry for years and so i am not in this for the profit i am only in it to help people out (i Know this sounds strange but its true).
Kyle

EDIT: Can enyone who have e-mailed me about a price list please e-mail again asking for it as my computer crashed and i lost everything from the last 4 days.

EDIT 2: I will email the price lists out ot anyone who has asked me to as soon as possible and can you please post on this topic what of the items which were on the website when you last looked at it which items you will be most likely to buy.

Edited by pyrodude, 09 February 2004 - 10:40 PM.

[pyrodude]

hiya,
sorry ive been so long but i will be sending out price lists today and hopefully the site will be up and running soon.
Cheers Kyle

[pyrotechnist]

I am a web site designer and computer programmer so is my dad but that is part time work I mostly make fireworks. Were you going to be getting the supplies from pyrodude? If you are going to be dealing with credit cards you are going to be needing good security are you writing the code your self or on a program? I use notepad for typing out my code don't use Microsoft front page don't se the need for it. Still making mine at moment just need pictures and vids. Whish you look on your web site.

Regards
Michael

[pyrodude]

I am not saying how the website is being made as this is a security problem. The code is not being wrote by myself but is going to be secure. You will see once the website comes online in a month or so. (just got a pay rise )
Cheers Kyle