[tailspin2019]

> Preorders generate risk for a business, because you take money and owe a customer goods

This is true if you capture funds up front, but preorders don't necessarily _need_ to work like that.

There are payment types/options (at least in the UK) where you can pre-auth the payment but not actually capture the funds until later - so you technically don't have the customers' money.

You can also take refundable deposits (slightly more risky, but risk is mitigated by clear terms and conditions that you're not guaranteeing availability or a fixed delivery date). Even a low-value deposit can also be a very useful signal for "actual demand" which can be helpful for capacity planning.

Source: have run pre-ordering system for large volume sales online in the UK + as a customer I've recently paid a $10 deposit a few months ahead of a US product launching in Europe (only paying the full balance when they emailed me to say they were ready to ship).

[jeroenhd]

You're right that with some workarounds you can reduce the negative impact of preorders on your business and turn it into a net benefit, I was just talking about valid business reasons not to invest time and effort into them.

Preorders can be a very nice gesture for customers, but they're no business necessity by any means. Implementing a new payment option (or, more likely, processor), setting up some kind of refund assurance system, dealing with customer support for cancellations, it all takes effort and time away from other parts of your business. I don't think the effort will be worth it until a shop can ship large enough volumes to need better capacity planning. From what I can tell, Pine seems to ship however many complete kits they can get their hands on. With the delays and issues in China/US shipping corridors, the availability of stock will probably be a bigger and more important issue to work on than the stock planning.

[tailspin2019]

I don't know, if you're fundamentally in the business of selling things, making it easy for customers to at least show you a clear intent to buy, and even better, backing that commitment with actual money, seems like a bit of a no brainer in many (most?) cases.

I appreciate supply may be the constraint rather than sales, but even more reason to lock in the sale now as best you can, as opposed to letting the customer go elsewhere in the meantime.

By the time your supply chain issues ease, sales then may become the constraint again (because people have moved on, the season has changed... whatever).

I don't discount your points about the time and effort required, but it doesn't seem clear cut to me that it's not worth doing.