[Drumshhh]

We've been kicking this idea around for a while, but haven't pulled the trigger yet mostly due to my desire for quality and a good customer experience. I'll explain what I mean in a moment.

The idea is for us to offer the Bullseye and Quadrant patterns in "kit" form - that is, 4 pre-cut circles of foam, the right assortment of black/colored felt pieces, and a template to help align everything.

See, the reason the Bullseye and Quadrant pads cost as much as they do right now is that they are hand-assembled by me and one of my more attention-to-detail-oriented helpers. By removing the cost of labor for these styles, I can reduce the price pretty significantly - probably down to near the same price as the standard styles.

However - and this is where the quality/customer experience thing comes in - I'm a little concerned that a customer (having had no practice at it) might slip up a bit during assembly and end up with, for example, a Quadrant set where the cross-lines don't line up, or where the felt quadrants are separated from each other instead of having a snug fit. I can mitigate this somewhat with good instructions (plenty of pictures!) and maybe by including a couple of extra felt pieces in each kit so that mistakes can be fixed.

For anyone with some patience and a relatively steady hand, assembling these things isn't all that difficult (Quadrant is harder than Bullseye for obvious reasons), but since I bet at least 50% of my customers are high-schoolers or younger, I'd hate for them to buy a kit and then think "Man, this thing sucks" because they couldn't get a clean assembly.

Long story short, if we offered, say, a Bullseye Kit for $14.99 and a Quadrant Kit for $17.99 (prices subject to change; I'm just guessing right now), would it be an attractive option?

One idea that builds on this one, too - an "Ultimate Kit" for maybe around $19.99, which includes all the parts of the Quadrant Kit, plus extra pieces of each color, and a set of the "bullseyes" from the middle of the Bullseye style, so you can make up your own design. Maybe you want 3 segments of black in the outer ring, one segment of color, and the inner circle in color. Kind of like an arrow pointing into the middle. Or maybe you want the colors divided in half, like an SLR camera focus ring. <shrug> Plenty of possibilities.

Besides lower price, a benefit of this is that we can keep these kits in stock much more easily than the completed sets - since I don't need to spend a couple of hours assembling them. [Edit - that "couple of hours" is for a few sets of either style, not for each single set! Price would be way, way higher if it took me 2 hours to assemble a set!]

What you think?