Production & Assembly Tips & Tricks

This can be hard to do when you first start your Glowforge Business, but once you have a few months under your belt and you have an idea of what products are your bestsellers, then it’s time to transition at least making those bestselling products into batch making instead of only enough for a specific customer’s order.

For instance, I have 3 years of Wholesale Christmas Ordering & Direct To Consumer Holiday sales data that I can then forecast at a bare minimum how many of certain designs I will sell in a given Holiday season. This helps us forecast materials needed, and volume and revenue we can expect.

When is a good time for Batch Making?

We start making batches of Holiday ornaments in January and have the bulk of it done before June. We make each design up to the point of differentiation between one variant to another, whether that be color or personalized City, State name on it, we complete as much of the ornament as possible. We typically choose our slower time for the bulk of the effort so it sets us up for success during the insanely busy times of the year. If you sell primarily Direct to Consumers, you’ll want to Batch Make before the major gift-giving holidays. If you are focusing on Wholesale, it’s similar but you have to make them another 2-3 months earlier than the time they are on store-shelves for purchase. Example, Retailers began buying next years’ Holiday product as early as June, even though it won’t go on their shelves until October.

When the Wholesale Holiday Rush happens, July through November, most of the time we aren’t lasering anything new and we are only pulling ornaments and fabricating just the customizations to glue on. This lets us keep a 1-2 day turnaround time during our busiest time of the year which equates to more sales and happier Retailers that get their product super fast and sold before they even have to pay for it – our Retailers buy with 60 day terms on Faire Wholesale, even though we get paid instantly upon proof of shipment. We enjoy short days of shipping out a lot of orders and we actually get to relax some because we’ve already done the hard part. So as you see, batch making can really be advantageous and help you keep your sanity during the busy season and bring in more sales for you too!

How do you Batch Create on a Glowforge?

We’ve really thought this through with our designs from the get go to allow for customization without a lot of extra effort. Instead of engraving the City, State on to the ornament background, it is much simpler to do so on a separate piece that gets glued on as the final step before it’s shipped out, allowing you to pre-make 95% of the ornament ahead of time.

You will need to make new versions of each of your design files and have a separate file for each of the pieces that make up that design. Best to sort this by color or wood species used. Always use a full board, fit as many of that piece on to that board as possible and then cut / score / engrave a full board at a time. Depending on the level of detail and the quantity, you might only get the pieces for your design manufactured for that day and have to pick another day for assembly. That’s okay too.

We know batch create all designs and I never laser anything less than a full board of any piece. I simply put the extras in a bin that I’ve marked with the designs name to keep the pieces all together. That way I may not have the time immediately to assemble them all, but I can work it in once a week to work on batches and even if I am doing a one-off made to order run, I will have all the pieces in the bin I need and all I have to do is glue it up and package it, saving all the fabrication time of cutting / scoring / engraving.

We batch everything in addition to the product too, including pre-tying twine cord loops, attaching double-sided 3M adhesive circles to magnets, and creating side slits on ornament backer cards.

How does Batch making cut costs?

Batch making products means less wasted materials and more efficient use of your time, it really doesn’t take that much more time to make 20+ of an item than it does to make 1 of that same item from start to finish. Time yourself… make quantity one of your bestseller and time yourself for each and every step of the process. Then after you adjust your files to be cut into batches of entire boards full of just one piece… you’ll know what’s the max number of completed products you can make with all those pieces. If that number is gigantic, 100 or more, than try a smaller number to start out timing yourself on your test bulk batch – so you don’t overwhelm yourself to start.

Write down your time to make quantity 1 of the item form start to finish.

Write down your time to make quantity 20 (or whatever number you selected) of that same item from start to finish.

Multiply both of those numbers by your hourly wage.

Then divide each number by the quantity of products you produced. In our example, 1, and the second one, 20.

You’ll end up with two vastly different Manufacturing per item costs. It’ll scare you how much it really costs to make just one, and then you’ll be relieved at the computed cost per item at the Batch making per item rate. If the cost is still too high, then up your batch quantity and time yourself all over again. You will see a difference. The per item batch making rate will keep getting cheaper and cheaper the more efficient you get. When you find a good balance of a batch quantity to produce and time it takes you to produce it, these figures will be used from this point forward to understand your true profitability and Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS) per design. This will help you see financially which products make you more money in less time, and can help you decide where you want to focus your energies.