Order Limiting

As a tiny shop, building everything from scratch, by hand, we have a very limited ability to supply our demand. If our first lottery is any indication, it appears we are supplying around 10 – 15% of people who are interested. It is really interesting to see the different reactions to this reality. I’d say that the majority of consumers that come to us have a good, big picture perspective. They appreciate the human to human communication, directly with the builder. They understand the worldly benefits of doing capitalism a little different by trending away from the unlimited consumption model and aiming towards a more thoughtful process. So far, they even seem to view the lottery quiz as a beneficial thing, even if it doesn’t work out in their favor. The educational value is more important than their ability to get what they want. Next month is another opportunity.

However, Timmermade is getting popular enough to get into a sector of consumers that is deeply offended by having their freedom to buy what they want, when they want it, limited. When I ended the January lottery this morning, a curiosity passed through my brain about how long it was going to take for one of these people to lash out. The answer is one hour. A person who was informed of the lottery over email a week before it went live (two weeks ago) showed up at the website and couldn’t figure out how to order. He does end up at the home page, but can’t comprehend the short description of the lottery process. When I am faced with someone like this, I always wonder what is happening. Are they actually trying to understand, but just don’t have enough reading comprehension to follow? I really try to make things as easy to understand as I can, without leaving critical details out. Or, is it more likely that this person isn’t used to having to read and think? I assume he just skimmed through the text, and therefore, did not understand any of it. Of course, having to answer the quiz question just put him over the edge. The resulting email to me (at 1 am) was just dumbfounded that I would ever require critical thinking before an order. It was rife with the usual typos, a lack of punctuation, and poor grammar. I’m an ex-pro athlete, turned maker, with one semester of community college secondary education. I’m not in a privileged position with regards to these things, but there really is a correlation between this writing and the level of critical thinking capabilities.

The further along Timmermade gets, the more I run into this culture. I am simply astonished that this exists in any degree of prevalence. It would be one thing if I was just expecting everyone to be educated, without fostering it. With everything I do here, I try to open up my mind and see where people are coming from. The industry doesn’t do a great job of fostering education around gear, so I assume that a lot of this is likely new to most people. Therefore, I try to create pathways towards education…..but I keep pulling in a culture that simply has no ability to comprehend anything at all. I mean, a sentence is literally, too much. Let alone a page about how to size your garment properly. The skimmer’s reading comprehension is limited to a few words in large, bold print and I really just can’t work with that. The more I see this, the more I want to retreat towards even smaller. I’d rather reduce and go back to working on a handful of custom projects. If it’s a matter of primarily dealing with this consumer or not having Timmermade at all, I’ll go bag groceries or something. It’s so depressing to me.

The commitment to staying small is something that a shallow mind sees as a negative, because the product is difficult to get for that individual. Those thinking about it will understand that the reason we are able to offer 34 highly customizable clothing designs, 16 different sleep systems with 25 variations of each, and the ability to custom size pretty much any item we make, is because we are small. The options shown on the website are kinda just suggestions, but at the end of the day, we’re going to sit down and build it by hand. None of this would exist if this was an outsourced production, big money making operation. We would have inventory of a few items, with limited options and no customization. For those entities, adding new products is a huge undertaking and commitment. Everything needs to be standardized and worked out so that they can invest in inventory. All I need to do is dream something up, create it, test it, and put it up as an option. If not a single person buys it, I’m out very little. Just the cost of a prototype. This means I can put up a ton of different options for people needing different things and this is a huge benefit to the consumer.

Knowing what benefit this provides to a lot of people makes it a real kick in the pants when I encounter such ungrateful ignorance. People have lost the ability to think, to a degree that basic humanity is a completely foreign concept. It’s a hoard of entitled, zombie consumers out there and I struggle with how to deal with it when it comes my way. That said, I’m always rejuvenated by the many thoughtful people that come our way. I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth conversations about selecting the most appropriate gear, talking through their use case and skillset, and hearing all about the fun adventures folks go on. I genuinely look forward to these kinds of emails in my inbox. It doesn’t feel like work at all.