Ok, it's been a busy month or so on SmallRun.. a bunch of new stuff went out, so figured it was time for a proper writeup.
"Runs" (Group Buys)
This one's been on the wishlist since basically day one.. group buys are finally in. A seller can open a "run" on a product - you set a minimum number of units, an optional max, a deadline & an estimated ship date. Buyers commit, but nobody pays anything up front - you save a payment method & it only gets charged if the run hits its minimum by the close date. If it falls short, the whole thing just unwinds & nobody's out a dime.
Think of it like a small-scale Kickstarter, except the product basically already exists - the maker just needs enough committed buyers to justify a batch.
It's live on the site now, but nobody's opened a run yet - so I'm looking for a few sellers willing to give it a shot first. If you've got a product that'd work as a group buy (or one you've been sitting on because the upfront quantity didn't make sense), let me know & I'll help you get one set up.
Wise Payouts
Sellers can now get paid straight to their bank account via Wise. Reason for this one is pretty simple: Stripe is great where it's available, but it isn't available everywhere, and not everyone wants a PayPal account. Wise reaches bank accounts in ~160 countries, converts at the mid-market rate, and you don't even need a Wise account - just enter your bank details once & you're set (Wise's transfer fee, typically 0.5-1%, comes out of each payout). Between Stripe, Wise & PayPal we can now pay makers in nearly every country, which was the whole point.
Bring Your Own Carrier Account
If you ship from Australia, the UK, or really anywhere outside the US, you can now connect your own carrier account & ship on your own negotiated rates. Right now that's Australia Post (MyPost Business or eParcel), Royal Mail (OBA / Pro), and DHL Express for everyone else. Labels still get purchased right from your seller dashboard like before - they're just billed to your account & your rates. Or if you want complete control, use flat-rate shipping & ship with whatever carrier you like - we've done a lot of work this month to make flat-rate much more useful.
Inventory Tracking, Reworked
Yeah, the old per-variant inventory model was a pain. If you sold a board in 4 colors with 3 header options, you had 12 separate stock numbers to babysit.. even though what you actually have on the shelf is "25 boards & a bin of headers". So now products default to a pooled model - one stock number for the product, with optional per-option tracking only where it makes sense. The old per-variant mode is still there for those who genuinely need it, but I suspect most sellers will never touch it again.
Per-Shop Analytics
Every shop now gets a full analytics page - visits, page views, top products, where your traffic comes from. It's powered by a self-hosted Matomo instance, so no Google Analytics, no tracking cookies & none of your (or your buyers') data goes to a third party.
Better Search
Search is now proper full-text search backed by Postgres, with relevance ranking. The old search was pretty basic - it should actually find what you're looking for now, even with partial or slightly-off terms.
Security Stuff
A bunch of work here too - behind-the-scenes mostly. Hardening against spam & abuse that I won't go into detail about - just know we take this aspect very seriously and are making continuous improvements to keep the platform secure & spam-free.
As always - if you're selling on SmallRun & something's rough or missing, tell me. More than half the stuff above exists because somebody asked for it.
-Aron (aka nullvalue)
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