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Update on Community Changes
Hi all,
We expect this to be our final update for the foreseeable future with regards to Community structuring and any big-picture changes.
Notable Changes:
Ultralight will merge with Outdoors into a singular community.
Flashlights and Blades will rejoin EDC as a singular community.
Tech will no longer source new products, for the time being.
Writing will return as a place to have discussions, but sourcing new products will be on pause.
For Context:
Our goal is always, and has always been, to add value to our community, whether that is through creating something new, bringing a community project to life, or simply leveraging the group-buy dynamic to get the best products for our members. We only enter a community after an ample amount of thought and consideration, and we only leave one after even more. At this point in time, however, continuing to support some communities is not compatible with our business.
In the past, we have typically found someone with the passion and knowledge to lead a community and interact directly with its members. They would then be able to source the most desirable products, leveraging that community’s built-in interest with suppliers and partners. This approach has worked well in communities known for bigger marketing budgets, better margin, or an openness to evolve, but it’s been a struggle to maintain in others.
For example, the tech industry is highly competitive and margins are thin. Very large players that move thousands and thousands of units can point to those numbers to push for lower prices, and they can afford to lose money in the name of competition.
In contrast, some communities have been built around established companies that are less open to changes in their existing business model. These producers have often led their target market for decades, and see no reason to change their designs, prices, or suppliers.
In the last couple years we’ve spun off several communities from each other (blades and flashlight from EDC, for instance), and ultimately it makes more sense to reunite them. We also understand that some of our users get annoyed about seeing things they have no interest in. Rest assured that we’re working on some simple features to resolve that issue—but for the time being, we think these communities belong together under a larger umbrella.
Today we are a community-focused product company that has evolved from a group-buying site aimed at sourcing the best products for our members. Given our product-focused heritage,we initially assumed that offering products would be a requirement for community interest and engagement. Based on community feedback about our recent announcements, it seems clear that this is not the case for at least some number of our members. As a result, we’re going to restore the discussion section for those of you in the Writing and Tech community who enjoy generally interacting with your fellow enthusiasts. At this point in time, we do not have someone with the knowledge or time to fully invest in these communities in a meaningful way. Finding new products and securing new sales will be rare, if it happens at all, which means this is a purely social initiative for the time being.
Most importantly, we’re always watching and listening to what everyone has to say, and we will continue to work towards the goal of improving our community as best we can. If the right circumstances present themselves, then we will take them into consideration and adjust accordingly. At this time, we believe the best path forward for Drop is to focus on our strongest communities and focus all our energy into building the highest quality community-driven enthusiast products and experiences.
Thanks for your attention and continued support.
Sincerely,
The Drop Team
(Edited)
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keyboard_arrow_downjpratch1969
1
Nov 10, 2019
I have not made a purchase in a looong time; IT must have something to do with catering to and favoring keyboards, flashlights and knives. Drop has become almost irrelevant to me. It was great while it lasted.
SantiagoDraco
611
Sep 26, 2019
To sum it up...
Massdrop is now Knife Drop. Seriously folks if you haven't lost a "mass" amount of customers by dropping things like kitchen/cooking, for example, it's going to happen soon.
Very disappointed. I was such a fan. RIP.
SantiagoDraco
611
Sep 26, 2019
The reason you are having these challenges is because you've lost sight of what originally made Massdrop popular. The site and it's products are a mess. Tons of cheap Chinese products masquerading as quality and very few of the quality products that brought people to the site. This is the first time I've been to the site in 3 months....and I used to browse daily.
You've become greedy and you've apparently hired marketing/product people who are more interested in making their mark with changes than in providing your customers with a true "Massdrop" experience. I frankly can't stand the new site and I only ever come here to see if you have one or two items at a good price. It's a mess to browse products and find anything useful.
I don't see the site recovering unless there's a wakeup internally that you need to return to what made Massdrop great... which is being a mass drop sales site not a "anything we can find to sell at one price site". You'll never compete against Amazon and that's what you appear to have thought you could do.
The other comments about "Drop" branded products are also spot on. Much of it is overpriced cheap versions of quality products you can find elsewhere. The junk Apogee knives are an example. Horrible handle/tang design and super thin and uncomfortable feel....you could have done better. Your brand should have been selective and "the best" not a wildly over-marketed product that is of lower quality/performance than competing products.
jesuslover69
13
Sep 23, 2019
I would prefer to feel like there are too many products on the site than what has happened in recent weeks, where it feels like there is a slow-drip of barely useful products being advertised. Pen & Ink - gone - no longer any eye wear variety, and maybe 1 product a day added.
It feels as if you are trying to channel people toward Drop branded products.
Please be honest with us - don't try and suggest that all of these things have been done for the user, as they make your site a far far worse place to shop than it was when I joined.
marlabee
302
Sep 23, 2019
WRITING GONE? THAT was irresponsible on the part of MASSDROP. (Drop sounds like something dead, BTW). We need more analog in life...a bit less techno-lazy.
jeffstyle
16
Sep 17, 2019
I don't know about everyone else, but I've definitely been noticing a lot more blades in my email lately. And while I think knives are cool, there are definitely some places (like at work) where opening an email and having a giant image of a knife staring back at you could be misconstrued as some kind of plan to use them in a violent way by some coworker that just happened to be glancing in the direction of your desk. I really don't wanna get called to HR, so for now i'm checking your emails on my phone, but please please please DROP, could you please add some more email options for users to fine tune their emails? I LOVE EDC, but I can't have knives show up in my email.
bshort
51
Sep 13, 2019
The more I think about it, the more I think this has to do with Massdrop's path to continued growth. I bet that it's difficult to source a drop in the first place, and I can't imagine most manufacturers are ok with Massdrop undercutting their traditional retailers.
This most likely compounds when Massdrop is trying to roll out more and more drops. To continue to grow they can try and source larger drops (which must be extremely difficult and exposes them to retaliation from manufacturers), or they can try and source drops across more products (which is logistically difficult and probably carries a ton of risk).
The problem is, I'm personally not really interested in their own "custom" versions of products, especially when all they're releasing is headphones, amps, and pocket knives. I'm all set on those categories, and that's not why I used to shop Massdrop anyway. I want to find quirky, awesome stuff that I wouldn't find elsewhere. I want excellent recommendations from the community for products that I didn't know I wanted.
Gilt.com went through a similar cycle 10 years ago. The economy was melting down and they were able to buy up lots of high end clothing for huge discounts. Once things started recovering it was very very hard for them to source inventory and it was hampering their growth. They tried to expand into other areas but they ran into direct competition that effectively capped their daily sales figures. For Gilt, the path was to eventually sell off the company at a price that was far below their funding targets. The employees and most of their investors got screwed in the process.
If Massdrop has taken VC money then this problem is especially bad, since their investors are looking for continued explosive growth. Once it plateaus their funding will dry up and potential negative consequences will be triggered, such as loss of equity and more control being handed over to their investors.
I'd love to see the following plan:
- Return the communities that we know and love. Removing them has obviously had a huge impact on the user community and I'd be willing to bet their month-over-month numbers are down and their bounce rate is most likely way up.
- If they're having a hard time finding people to run the communities and source the products, then either try and identify enthusiastic users who are willing to step in and help build the community or just hire users who are obviously passionate about certain categories.
- Establish an affiliate program. This will encourage more people to link into Massdrop and promote products from external community sites.
- Expand the communities and forums by making the user experience better. Clean up the interface. Make searching better. Introduce some sort of flair for users who are engaged and have their comments voted up by others. Create some incentives for engagement.
- Create a program for retailers who are looking to liquidate or move their inventories. Make it easy to sign up. Let the external retailers handle their own shipping. Let them set their own prices.
- Create a better incentive for manufacturers to sell through Massdrop. I'm guessing their Studio program is pretty popular and profitable, since they're obviously shifting their focus to Studio. To make it enticing for users they need to expand the range of products they offer this way or they need to make the products distinctive in some way.
(Edited)
reswright
3852
Sep 13, 2019
bshortYou know, that sound a lot like what happened to Rue La La back in the day as well. I don't know about the internal stuff but they went from awesome to sucksville in, like, a month's time, and just kept driving in the same direction.
OlMort
Sep 13, 2019
Anybody know of any other sites that do drops for games and trading cards like MTG? I had noticed that stuff like variety and prices started going down the drain when the site changed to drop.com, but I didn't think they'd just cut them.
Does anybody know of any alternatives?
reswright
3852
Sep 13, 2019
As someone who used to collect MTG -- the more common deals are on a set, the more overproduced it was and the less the cards ended up appreciating in value. I mean, there was a while I could get booster boxes of Fallen Empires for like $40. It had something to do with overproducing it, because they figured it'd sell like Legends,and it didn't. It also had something to do with how bad most people thought it sucked. FE is possibly the most underpowered set WOTC ever released. Both those facts contributed to the fact that for a long time when I was collecting, every set was marked up except for FE which was going for next to nothing, and everyone and their dog was offering some kinda deal on it.
I just don't know that a group buying site, or whatever Drop has become, is the best fit for long term good deals on CCGs and the like that depend on scarcity mechanics to sustain their pricing. That's not a slam on Drop so much as it's a recognition that we're not in the right space to be interesting to them. Because it's not like MTG needs Drop to spread the word, know what I mean?
On the other hand, MTG does have inventory that sells slower than other parts of their inventory, and that's about the only incentive they have to work with someone like Drop. But that doesn't work out well for Drop buyers unless they're only playing for the entertainment value and not worried about collectability and value, because slow selling inventory in MTG equals cards that won't have much resale value for a long, long time, if ever.
I know what you mean, though. I haven't bought MTG for years, but I still looked over whatever Drop posted in that category. Stuff like that is hard to quantify metrically for Drop -- they want us to buy stuff, not just sit and be entertained by their labors for free -- but you do need that entertainment factor for people to come and spend time in your storefront.
fernandezler
14
Sep 25, 2019
OlMortMassdrop became my go to for buying MTG. Spent tons of money on it here. If anyone knows of a similar place to buy all kinds of mtg I'd be interested. I mean I know of the usual suspects (card kingdom, lgs, channel fireball, etc.) but something about buying from massdrop was smooth and cleaner than the alternatives.
bshort
51
Sep 12, 2019
This is a huge mistake.
As others in this thread have pointed out, most of the charm of Massdrop was finding quirky products that I might not see in other places. Collapsing communities down to just a few broad categories and shifting to custom products means that I can just find the same things in other places (Amazon, B&H) for cheaper prices and with better shipping options.
Good luck with the change. Maybe it will work out for you. I hate it, though.
(Edited)
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