So you want to be a MortiSafe Pro Agent?

Introduction

I make parts which can be fitted into a digital safe to make it a MortiSafe. You could make a business from becoming an Agent, buying the digital safe and other bits (from ebay etc) and buying the other parts from me, fitting them together, and selling them as fully fitted and working MortiSafes. To find out what a MortiSafe is, see the rest of the site.

What's the business?

The production of the MortiSafe parts is currently a 'hobby' business - I'm making in small volume and not agressively marketing it, so if you're hoping to make millions from it, this may not be the ideal business opportunity. Perhaps it will take off and turn into a high volume business, and if so then you'll benefit from being in at the beginning, but I have no specific plans for that at the moment. And currently the project is in 'early adopter' phase, I've only sold a few and expecting feedback from them may cause tweaks to it.

I will handle all questions from customers about the technical workings of the MortiSafe, you only need manage buying in safes and fitting MortiSafe parts to it (which would take 5 minutes to fit and test when you get used to it) and shipping the finished product to the customer.

How would it work?

It works like this:

• A customer contacts you and pays for a completed MortiSafe
• You acquire the digital safe (and other 'Muggle Parts') from ebay or wherever's convenient
• You buy the MortiSafe 'Magic Parts' from me
• You fit them together and send them on to the customer, keeping whatever profit you've allowed for in the price.

As you can see, there's no initial outlay required by any Agent until they get an order (no stock needed) although that will slow down initial delivery.

Agent listing

There is a page here listing all the MortiSafe Agents, including information such as:

• Where in the world they are
• Where would they ship to
• How much do they charge for the assembly and shipping
• What's the financial arrangement (who does the customer pay etc)
• Is the Agent associated with a known online business
• How does a customer get in touch (I can handle contact if it's easier for the Agent to avoid your email address getting hit by spam)
• We need some indication of the time between placing an order and delivering the MortiSafe to the customer, atlhough that depends on many things so may not be calculable yet.

Potential problems

There are a few challenges with all this, including:

• I'm happy to handle replacement faulty parts for the bits I sell. I imagine if you ship a safe and there's a problem with it then you'd need to handle that (of course, since you'd modified the safe, that would invalidate your guarantee with the supplier). The problem comes if the customer has an unknown problem so we don't know whose responsibility it is. We need to come up with a 'statement of responsibility' or something.
• When I sell the parts to a customer, I get them to agree to these Conditions of Sale which includes limiting my liability to replacement parts or refund. I admit, I don't know if this is legally binding, and international sales complicates that some more.
• I'm aware that commercial products have to go through formal certification, such as CE marking in Europe. The parts of the MortiSafe are effecively hand made and low voltage (no danger of death) and are currently being sold as one-off items (not commecial volume) so I hope are exempt from formal certification. It will be up to you as seller of the completed safe to understand if there's any such regulation in your area which applies to what you're selling.

What's next?

• Take a look at the list of 'Muggle parts' here which you would need to get in addition to the 'Magic parts' you get from me to make a full MortiSafe. * There's some suggested sources, but you may find you can buy them locally to you which might save on postage and time.
• Take a look at the build instructions to check you're okay with doing that but the only tricky bit is cleaning insulation off the end of a wire so I don't think anyone would have a problem doing it, and should take 5 minutes once you've done it the first time.
• You may need to make some consideration to reshipping the safe once it has parts inside it. Not sure what's best for that, perhaps taping the parts inside the safe or filling it with packaging material.
• Work out what it would cost you to make a MortiSafe including shipping to customer (and possibly purchase of magic parts, depending how we do it).
• If you want to go ahead with it, send me that info and any details from the 'Agent listing' section above.
• I'll list whatever details you give on this site.
• A customer will get in contact either directly with you or with me, and you do business.

Other information

• My current plan is for the cost to end customer or to an Agent for the magic parts to be £30 (UK sterling currency) (around US$46) which includes shipping worldwide and paypal charges etc. That's dependent on many things including volume, so is a ballpark figure at the moment (likely that will be the initial price but may change later). You can work out your cost calculations based on that figure.
• FYI I think you can get the other parts for around £30 / $40 so you could use that as a benchmark to add profit and shipping and come up with a target customer price. For instance, shipping is around £13 / $15 (cheapest option) so with £12 / $14 profit you could sell for £85 / $115, but up to you to check those figures and pick a price. You could perhaps start at those prices (if the postage is right for you, you may want to offer a range of postage options) and 'see how it goes' and adjust accordingly after a few sales.
• As long as you're happy with all the above, you shouldn't need to purchase anything up front. When you get a first customer, you could use that experience to get the parts, see what its all about, then sell it on.
• If you're interested in this project other than as a business and would like to build a MortiSafe for yourself and to understand how it works, I will sell you the magic parts at cost price (which is only a few pounds less than sale price). Get in touch if you're interested.
• I intend to reorganise this site so that at the top level, a customer can choose to either see the Agent details or to buy the muggle and magic parts for themselves. So they won't need to read through all the wiring details if they want to buy a pre-built one from you.
• There's a very simple (1 minute) process listed here (the last few steps) which you can use to confirm that the wiring is correct within the safe.

My production of the magic parts is dependent on getting hold of all the parts required, then making them up, all of which takes time (some parts come from China) so my lead time is quite unpredictable. I have some stock at the moment but don't know how much more to buy until I understand what the level of interest is for the product. At times we could be talking about a customer waiting a month between initial interest/payment and receiving goods.

• It's up to you what price you quote for selling a fully built MortiSafe, and I can list that price on the 'Agents' page on the website for you. If I get several Agents all in the same area making the same offering but at different prices, it probably makes sense for you to get together and agree on a fee, otherwise the one with the lowest fee will always get the custom.
• I'm currently shipping a PP3 9v battery with the magic parts, but may drop that and you can find a cheap local source for them (no point me posting stuff you can get yourself). Or tell the custoemr they need to supply their own.
• I'm not initially planning on agressive marketing of this product, so don't expect hundreds of customers within the first week. It will initially be posted to sites like FetLife to generate some low volume sales. I don't currently have any plan for commercial advertising (don't have the infrastructure at the moment for large volume).
• If this gets popular, I may be interested in 'outsourcing' the production of these units. It takes a little soldering but not too much technical knowledge. No plans for that yet, but feel free to mention to me if you'd be interested

There's a few potential tweaks to the design which I'm considering, but want to get through the first batch of sales before redesigning anything. Any tweaks won't make a significant change to the build, security or cost of the system.

• You're free to do any other promotion of the MortiSafe if you like, as long as it accurately represents the capability of the device. I would not plan on doing that just yet as you don't want to generate lots of excited customers and not have the volume of product to meet it. But opportunities for that may come later.