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Hi all,
I'm currently toying around with the idea of opening a bits site, nothing huge to start with but something that can hopefully be helpful to the community and grow over time.

Thought I would do a little market research on my go to community and ask, specifically, which bits do you mostly visit bit sites for? anything from guns to entire sprues, as without knowing what the community wants, I can't very well stock it

I'm also open to any other criticisms you might have with current bits sites that I could avoid in the hopes of creating a more user friendly experience

I have used Warstore, Hoard 'o Bits, Bits and Kits and Bitz Barn. Keeping items in stock is probably my biggest issue with bits sites. If I can't get all the bits I'm after in one order, and have to go else where to get certain ones, I usually don't place an order. Obviously certain bits will go quicker than others, but I think there needs to be a happy medium that allows a constant stock of needed bits.

Shipping and communication are also important. There are sites who ship quickly, but never send a notification past the order confirmation so I don't know the order is in transit or have a way to track it. Keep your customers up to date on the order status, without them having to contact you about it.

Also, keep price reasonable. Warstore is the worst offender of jacking up prices on items as the meta shifts. $9 meltaguns and $16 apothecary upgrade sets that were $2-3 each a year before makes people stop buying all together. The only reason they continue to receive my business is the 20% off kits and they keep regular stock on their bits. However, my bits ordering from them went from probably once a month to maybe once or twice a year because of how they run their bits section of the website.

my largest problem with bits sites is 1 of 2 things. either thay have what i want and are overpriced - see Battlewagon bits or Spikey bits; or they are cheap and rarely re-stock their bits - see Bitz Box or Bitz Barn.

I like that some bits sites offer free shipping. It's not that I'm worried about paying for shipping, but I like that there's no additional calculation involved. My total is my total and there's nothing more to worry about.

I also like non-GW bits services. There's a bits seller on feebay who's parted out Super Dungeon Explore, amongst other things.

Eric

Maybe add a function that allows people to request restocks of items? Bitz Box used to have one, I think, but their forum stopped working.

Stock stock stock is the main thing to me. Too often only the flavor army of the month (quarter/whatever) gets stalked. Maybe the stuff I'm after doesn't sell well or isn't worth restocking. Damn my eccentric tastes. I have a helluva hard time finding eldar stuff for instance.


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Do we have a sticky of bitz places somewhere? We should have one!

Also, protip on poorly-selling bits - "lucky dip"-type bags seem to be a good way of getting rid of unwanted stock.

Wow, lots of people here have no idea how supply and demand works. And I say this as a (paraphrasing Frazzled et al.) dirty pinko commie.

When almost everybody wants that same one bit and nothing else from a given kit, you either have to price that bit so that is covers the cost of the entire kit, or you don't restock. Otherwise you're just left with a bunch of kits only missing that one bit, and zero profits.