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 Pro. 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 MortiSafe Pro's. To find out what a MortiSafe Pro is, see the rest of the site.

What's the business?

The production of the MortiSafe Pro parts is currently a 'hobby' business - I'm making in small volume and not aggressively 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 Pro, you only need manage buying in safes and fitting MortiSafe Pro 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 me about buying from an agent and I refer them on to you
• They contact you and pay for a completed MortiSafe Pro
• You acquire the digital safe (and other 'Muggle Parts') from ebay or wherever's convenient
• You buy the MortiSafe Pro '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 if you were to hold stock then it would speed up initial delivery (that's up to you).

Agent listing

There is a page here listing all the MortiSafe Pro 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
• Is the Agent associated with a known online business
• It would be worth having some words of description from the Agent to express how they can be trusted with someone's money - if they've been a recognized figure online, they manage social groups or online groups, etc
• We need a guideline indication of the time between placing an order and delivering the MortiSafe Pro to the customer, although 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. You should get your customer to agree to something similar, but that's up to you.
• I'm aware that commercial products have to go through formal certification, such as CE marking in Europe. The parts of the MortiSafe Pro are (apart from wire cutting) only plugging together existing parts and and are all low voltage (no danger of death) and are currently being sold as one-off items (not commercial volume) so I hope they're 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' which you would need to get in addition to the 'Magic parts' you get from me to make a full MortiSafe Pro.
• 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 Pro including shipping to customer.
• 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 with me, I send them on 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 £70 (UK sterling currency) (around US$110) 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 £17 / $25 profit you could sell for £130 / $190, but up to you to check those figures and pick a price.
• 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 Pro for yourself and to understand how it works, I will sell you the magic parts at cost price of £55. Get in touch if you're interested.
• There's a simple process you can use to confirm that a safe is correctly wired, but that will involve you configuring the safe to use your home wifi system then doing a test lockup (if you configure the safe to unlock in the past, it will lock then unlock which is a handy test). You'll need to clear out that configuration before sending it to the customer so they don't get your wifi password.
• My production of the magic parts is dependent on getting hold of all the parts required 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 week or two between initial interest/payment and receiving goods.
• It's up to you what price you quote for selling a fully built MortiSafe Pro, 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 not initially planning on aggressive 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).
• There's lots of enhancements I have planned for the software which I'm considering, but want to get through the first batch of sales before redesigning anything. Any changes won't make a significant change to the build, security or cost of the system.
• You're free to do any other promotion of MortiSafe Pro 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.