Post #693395 by swizzle on Fri, Sep 13, 2013 4:54 AM

On 2013-09-12 13:09, lunavideogames wrote:

My concerns are:

That the wait time is getting longer on the mugs.

That everyone might get the exact same colored mugs (Raw Lava being popular) which may in the future decrease the value of the mugs.

When i first read this comment it immediately ruffled my feathers but when i read this;

On 2013-09-12 16:28, lunavideogames wrote:

Just to clarify, I am just playing devils advocate here. I have hundreds of mugs but I have never sold a single one and I agree that it is not cool to buy mugs just to sell them for more. I think they should be used for their intended purpose, drinking tropical drinks out of. I am not worried about the value that they hold, just the value they have to me. I fully support Munktiki and anything they can do to better their business.

Does anyone feel that this might take away from the "fun" or "surprise factor" in finding that cool color you wanted?

I always thought I was lucky when I could get the color I wanted before anyone else, but it is also cool to to just be able to say, "I want this color."

I calmed back down. You are lucky lunavideogames. :D

My interest in Tiki and Tiki culture began with the purchase of a Munktiki mug around 9 years ago and in that time the way that they sell their mugs has changed a few times, and i have to say that i'm in two minds of how they are doing it at the moment and also prior to this way.

I know, and i'm sure others do too, that they were having a lot of problems with people buying several mugs at once and then flipping them on eBay at inflated prices and those that are TRUE collectors were missing out on mugs they really wanted because of these 'people'. (I prefer to use the term scumbags.) Obviously they had to do something to make it fair on the real collectors and limiting purchases to one per customer for the day made sense and is a good way to go about it.

Since i first began collecting, Tiki has become far more popular as has the desirability of Munktiki's mugs so therefore if you are not online when the mugs are released for sale you ARE going to miss out. And even if you are online, there is so much traffic that the system crashes and by the time the page reloads all the mugs are gone.

As lunavideogames mentioned allowing customers to choose their own colours eliminates the problem of Munktiki being stuck with colours that are not as popular, or as well liked as others and by going about it this way they are pretty much guaranteed to sell every one no matter what, even if it ends up that they might only make the mugs in two or three colours out of all the options available because the majority of peoples favourite colour might be blue, for example. Which, as a mug maker myself, is great, as that actually speeds up the process as you can then finish several, dozens even, in one go as opposed to constantly stopping and having to change colours, clean equipment, etc. This also ties in with his comment about the wait time. Ceramics is a very time consuming process and things always take longer than you expect.

One of the things i do not like about this way of doing things is that it can be extremely difficult to decide on a colour and as i mentioned, these days, by the time you have worked out what colour you really want the allotted amount of mugs up for sale could have sold and you might miss out. At least when all the mugs were released in the same colour if you were able to put one in your basket and checkout you were guaranteed a mug, even if it was the same as 99 other peoples. But is that really a bad thing?

Personally i would rather add the few mugs i don't have that were only released in one colour in a design i really like as opposed to another design i might not care for that much just because it's a one of a kind. My point here is that i'm sure that there are people out there who miss out on their first colour choice and then 'settle' for whatever else is left or available just to have that mug, regardless of whether or not they really like the design, or only like the design in a particular colour.

On a side note, here is my wall of Munktiki mugs (including various others on a couple of rows on the top which were added to the extension i HAD to build to this cabinet a few weeks ago). All the recent purchases of their mugs i've made are in the lower left corner. There are quite a few recent ones that i missed out on that i would have liked but finances, lack of room and also the aforementioned issue of the mugs selling soooo fast that by the time i got online they were gone.