Minimum Orders

Can someone with more business sense than me explain the $50 minimum order idea. On top of the $50 is a $12 charge regardless of order size plus an additional 15% of your order. Is it really better to take zero of my dollars than to allow me to order $40 worth of the plants I really want and charge me the same $12 + 15%? Presumably the $12 is the flat fee associated with organizing the order (?) and the rest scales with order size. I don't get it.

I also found that the $30 gift certificate can't be processed on their site because it violates the $50 minimum - this seems beyond stupid to me but I am ready to be enlightened as to why this too makes sense.

I've ordered before (the minimum was lower) - I like their plants so I may eventually make another order (they probably correctly assume they can take advantage of our addiction), but this doesn't seem like a way to cultivate good long term relations with your potential customers. Psychologically, spreading the pain over a greater number of smaller orders is sometime required.

 

Apologies in advance for the long post. I LIKE EOoM's plants and hope they thrive. We should be rooting (ahem) for growers (I'm sure almost all just started out as regular old plant nuts just like us) especially ones that sell species. I will probably end up eventually pulling the trigger on an order I've been thinking about.

I think the fact that no one understands the rationale of the pricing is really the point. Customers appreciate transparency, I think. Peter and Marni are suggesting that the explanation is that the plant prices are not reflecting the true cost of doing business. I guess the question is, why not? It seems better to charge me what the plant costs rather than forcing me to figure out if I want the plants I want badly enough to also order some plants I don't want so I meet the minimum order size.

And yes, I can see it could be a grey area if you sell lot's of species seedlings for $7 a pop. Other places (but not all) do have minimum order size, but I think all are less than EOoM.

Speaking for myself, I have had a negative reaction from feeling forced into meeting this minimum - it just seemed a bit high to me (there's that gray area) but I'm sure it seems trifling to many. So for most, perhaps there is no issue.

I think the real irony here is that when most of us think about putting together an order, when we actually ACT on it, it usually gets up to $50 (and higher!) pretty fast anyway - my experience. My point is that my reluctance to have my hand forced by someone else has resulted in me reacting by not making an order that would likely have gone near (or over) $50 anyway once I got into order mode - yes, it is irrational but that's human nature. So I may end up making an order but resenting the process. My assumption is always that if I have a reaction to something that a whole lot of people have the same reaction. In an ideal world we could do the economics experiment where they drop the minimum price and see what happens to order volume - I would find that mildly interesting. As I noted in my earlier post, they'd get more of my money if they lowered to minimum.

Anyway, didn't want to start an overall "let's bash EOoM" thread - if I were feeling more flush, I'd just order to my heart's content, as they have nice plants.

I was mostly just venting a bit of frustration mostly generated by the fact that they wouldn't sell the $30 gift certificate WHICH IS ON THEIR SITE to my father-in-law, who wanted to give me a present. WTF. That makes no sense, even if I totally buy into the pricing structure - why can't I use a $30 gift certificate and make up the rest myself to meet the minimum order requirement? Help me understand.