Lapidary Slabs for Sale:

It’s 2:00 am and "You’ve got mail!" bellows!
Sure enough, it’s from another Artist that’s got insomnia. The email reads:

Subject: small slabs by the lb.
Message: i need small slabss about 6 inches by 4,5 or 6 inches by the lb.they need to be thin about one eighth to one quarter of an inch.

As expected of me, I return email the potential customer requesting additional information.

The second email response is a little more explicit. It states:

“I need about 20 lbs.of pieces of all kinds of random minerals .Odd shapes are good and the thinner the better. Some will have pattern and some not and thats o.k.
Could you send me your phone no. and where you are located .Also what you think the shipping cost will be . Broken pieces are o.k. as long as they are good size and thin.”

Early that morning, I’m sorting through the Slab stash to gather enough material to fill the order. Great! There are plenty of Slabs that meet the criteria, so email the customer and get the ball rolling. The mail person is due around 2:00 pm, so this will be a slam dunk order.

My email states the charges per pound for slabs will be $13.00 per pound plus shipping.
Customer response:

“hi,
Thanks but the price is too high for me.I had bought some in Arizona for $5 a lb. These were irregular sizes and i picked out the larger pieces that i needed. They can be rejects and irregular shapes. Let me know.”
Oh the joys of operating your own business! I spent the rest of the afternoon restocking the Slabs!
Now it’s real easy to complain about the way this event progressed and place the blame on the customer. But instead, I’m more prone to blame myself.
First mistake was asking for additional information. I operate an Internet Website, and the correct response should have been “All Slabs available are listed on our Web Site”. That would have been the end of the whole mess. But, No! Dummy here asked for more punishment by requesting more information. By doing so, I made myself the customers’ slave employee.
The customers’ last response was the last straw for me! The customer went from “small slabs” in the first email to “large slabs” in the final email. This is a recipe for failure! This person is not going to be satisfied, no matter what I do. Oh, and we finally got to the meat of the request, $5.00 per pound for slabs!

So, just cut my losses and shut this deal down. My final email to the customer was one of congratulations for making such a good buy in Arizona (the customer was from California) and informing them I did not have any $5.00 per pound slabs available.
The internet has opened up the marketplace. It allows the whole world of uninformed Artists & Crafters to graze in the marketplace. A customer wouldn’t think about driving all over the country to bargain shop with the price of gas like it is today but they will bargain shop through email while driving up business owners advertising costs. At $5.00 per pound for cut slabs, that’s about a $12.00 per pound loss figuring the cost of the rough, equipment depreciation and labor.