It’s been one full year since the launch of the Precious Plastic Bazar 🎉🙌🎂

Time to share some numbers we’ve collected, explain a few updates, and congratulate a few of our top sellers. While year 1 was our beta year, the Bazar is now becoming a crucial part of Precious Plastic and will only grow in importance with the release of Version 4.

Show Me the Numbers

‍We’d like to share some key financials and user stats with you from the last year. It’s important to us to share everything openly so the community knows exactly where we are and can give feedback or ideas for moving forward. Who knows – maybe it will encourage more of you to create cool stuff and start selling 😉

Sales

Below you can see that transaction sales have grown steadily since last year, with an average monthly growth rate of 30% (kind of easy when you start from zero 😉). We’re hoping to increase transactions in the future through sharing more about the Bazar in our online updates. We are also doing some outreach to Precious Plastic workspaces around the world who are making great products but haven’t yet signed up for the Bazar – If that’s you, make sure to sign up. We even created a sellers guide to get you started 🙂

Next you can see that the majority of items sold on the Bazar were machines or machine parts. While we love to see people using the Bazar to find machines for their workspaces, in the next year we want to grow the number of products and moulds sold. Many people manage to get a machine up and running, but its beautiful designed moulds and products that will help us reach a new paradigm of plastic recycling.

New! Workshop Category

‍Education and product making workshops have become a big part of the Precious Plastic community around the world. That’s why we’ve added workshops as a category on the Bazar so schools, companies and other groups can find out who’s offering them and purchase a workshop through the Bazar. You can choose to offer workshops for a flat fee, or charge per person who plans on attending. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences about how this category can be helpful for your workspace!

User Experience Changes

‍We’ve also added a few changes to the design of the Bazar to make it more user friendly. You’ll now see larger images, updated product listing details, and search by keywords.

We’ve Added Stripe!

‍One of the biggest problems with the Bazar has been high international transaction fees. Because our community is spread out all over the world, quite a few transactions are occurring across national borders (Plastic Waste has no boundaries 💩).

For example, an international transaction using PayPal could cost up to 10% of the total product price, depending on the location of the buyer and seller. Stripe is a much lower international transaction fees at 1.4% + 0.25 € for European cards and 2.9% + 0.25€ for non-European cards. Sellers can still choose to use PayPal, as Stripe doesn’t provide service in all countries.

Moving Forward

‍We know the Bazar still has some downsides in regards to user experience, which we will continue to work on over the next year. Unfortunately the service we use to host the Bazar is pretty restrictive, but we’re always looking for ways we can push the limit to improve. Shipping internationally is still a bit tricky, the messaging system is far from ideal, and sellers still can’t add variations of their products. Feel free to share other improvements you would like to see in the comments below.

Top Sellers

‍Lastly we want to congratulate the top three sellers on the bazar. Good job guys, you deserve it! Opo’Lab has been producing all four machine sets, Jacek L makes a great shredder kit, and Megatec makes a variety of a great machine parts.

That’s all for now. See you all next time 👍🤖

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