Customer Mapping

[kfishe2]

This is a great project that we undertook with our 6 year old as a way of making him a part of our "sales team." The map represents about 160 sales from 2015, starting with our first Lego sale in March. Each customer gets a pin on the map and then as we ship to a new state my son gets to use the computer to look up an interesting fact about that state, and then write it in a journal. That way he is learning cool facts, and practicing his handwriting and computer skills. I bet he is the only kid in his class that knows what a peninsula is (Florida), or what the state song of Connecticut is (Yankee Doodle). Ive been waiting for a sale to Alaska so we can learn about archipelagos, but that may just be the geography nerd in me coming out.

Multiple sales to a city get a larger pin, and we have them for the cities you would expect like New York, Chicago, LA. Some surprising ones too like Chattanooga Tennessee. Wouldn't have guessed that one but we ship quite a few items to multiple buyers there.

I wish now that I would have sprung for the bigger world map, as we have had 15 international sales that could have been added on that I was not anticipating having made.

Besides being a great learning project for my son, it has been useful to me to validate our shipping fee practices as I can easily see where most of my customers are from, and although it is skewed towards the east coast, I still have a fair amount headed out west.

I know this wouldn't be practical for some here as their volume is much too large, but for a small timer like myself this is a fun way to involve your kids in your hobby. And have something cool on your wall that people will ask about. My thanks go out to everyone here for the advice and insights over the past year, and I wish everyone a great 2016!

[Migration]

That is a really cool idea, I may have to try that one with my kids. Where are you located if you don't mind my asking?

[kfishe2]

That is a really cool idea, I may have to try that one with my kids. Where are you located if you don't mind my asking?

York county Pennsylvania. If I threw a rock really hard I could probably come close to the Maryland line.

[terrymc4677]

Very cool idea. Thank you for sharing.

[Huskers1236]

When I was buying/selling a lot of baseball cards, I did the same thing.  I would say that over half of my sales went to New York City and the state of California, for obvious reasons.  It was fun to show the kids, though they were really small at the time.  I had sales to all 50 states, but took awhile to get stuff to sparsely populated states such as Montana.  Kind of wish I would have started over when starting the Lego hobby, but never did. 

[Alpinemaps]

As a professional geographer, I think this is awesome.  I'm a little sad I didn't think of this myself.  I think I'm going to get me a nice US map, and do the same thing as you did @kfishe2.  I really like how you incorporated it into a learning lesson.  I have kids that are (almost) 8 and 4, so it's perfect for them.

[kfishe2]

It started because we were going to use most of the profits from our venture to help pay for a trip to Disney World. Since we would be pulling our son out of kindergarten for a week, the school requires it to be an educational trip. I know there are websites devoted to showing how Disney IS educational, but we wanted to really do it. So this was just one facet of getting ready for the trip. One side result is when we are looking at a potential set to sell or to keep for ourselves, I can just ask my son, "would you rather keep this set and build it, or if we sell it it could pay for an extra day at Disney?" Almost 100% of his answers have been to sell. Plus he gets to get some kind of concept about how big our country is. Right now everything is measured in his standard units, like "this city is 10 trips to grandmas house away", or "82 episodes of Phineas and Ferb away."

I was really into geography as a kid. This map is actually 30 some tears old. I got it out of one of my dad's National Geographic magazines. I still have a collection of maps from those magazines.

When I look at the map, I know that I do have sales going out to affluent areas in California, but they are mostly smaller items that I can do free first class shipping on. I could offer free shipping and expand to those areas, but thanks partly to my map I also can see that a large portion of my larger sets go to New Jersey with customer-paid shipping. So there is obviously a market close to me for my items that I can tap into and have them pay for shipping. 

 

[2x4]

This is really interesting to me as I live very close to you (geographically speaking anyway) in Montgomery county, PA and I don't sell a lot of big sets, I mostly sell parts on bricklink, and the vast majority of my orders seem to come from California and Oregon. Very few that are even kind of local. My daughter will start kindergarten this September, so I think I'll also try to make use of your idea so she can learn a little more about these places. Thanks for taking it one step beyond simple customer mapping and making it a great lesson plan!

[jaisonline]

i think we need a larger map. global.

 

[Fcbarcelona101]

I actually like this a lot, even for me w/o kids! lol

[Guest ph4tb0i]

If you can please at least teach him Canada as well and that we're not one big blob like it is on that map... lol.

[kfishe2]

This is really interesting to me as I live very close to you (geographically speaking anyway) in Montgomery county, PA and I don't sell a lot of big sets, I mostly sell parts on bricklink, and the vast majority of my orders seem to come from California and Oregon. Very few that are even kind of local. My daughter will start kindergarten this September, so I think I'll also try to make use of your idea so she can learn a little more about these places. Thanks for taking it one step beyond simple customer mapping and making it a great lesson plan!

I guess I should be specific on "large set". For me its one between $75-$200 and where I make my most money. Might not be the same definition for everyone. Looking back, I should have used the different pin colors to represent different types of sets or different values . That way you could really see where your different customers were. Might be something for anyone who is going to start their own.

[kfishe2]

If you can please at least teach him Canada as well and that we're not one big blob like it is on that map... lol.

As soon as we get a Canadian sale it will get added! We already have a list of 10 or so countries for him to research after he is done with his states. Sometimes I want to have a free shipping promotion to certain states so we can complete our set of 50. "Free shipping for buyers for North Dakota !"

[Migration]

Ran across this today, it seems like a decent deal. It's framed and magnetic. https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-magnetic-pin-travel-maps-1?utm_campaign=UserReferral_mih&utm_source=uu6555340&utm_medium=email

 

[kfishe2]

Ran across this today, it seems like a decent deal. It's framed and magnetic. https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-magnetic-pin-travel-maps-1?utm_campaign=UserReferral_mih&utm_source=uu6555340&utm_medium=email

 

Looks awesome. By the time you buy a standard large map and frame and pins you would be close to $50 anyway. And it wouldn't have 200 tiny pin holes all over it like mine!