Successfully Sell Your CNC Products To The Public

The great thing about starting a CNC business is that there is no limit to how far you could take it. Some people may just want to make some sales to pay off their machine. Some may want to start a side hustle. But it’s great to know that is you want to become a full time maker you definitely could do that too.

We’re going to cover 5 essential tips for building a B2C CNC business. Unfortunately, when you see makers “get stuck” trying to grow their business, it usually comes back to these fundamentals.

(Keep in mind, make sure you have “The Basics” covered, before focusing on any of the following tips.)

5 Tips for Starting a B2C CNC Business

Tip 1: Consider Your Business at Scale

Choosing your product for your CNC business ties into choosing your niche. Consider the technicalities when you ramp up production. For example, Storing raw materials and finished goods. One of the benefits of CNC is that when you are getting started selling, you could just make products on demand. But as your brand really starts to take off this may become more challenging. If you know you get an average of 1000 sales per month, you may choose to over produce, to keep an inventory stock so you don’t experience a shortage if there is increased demand or if you run out of raw materials.

Owning a CNC business is like owning a factory. Make sure you are designing every aspect of the business to be capable of scaling. Product design, assembly line, logistics, customer service, and maintenance, all can be optimized to run smoothly, just like your CNC machine.

Tip 2: Media is Everything

When selling B2C, volume of sales is fundamental. The better your media, the more people you will convert. From the very beginning, take the time to take incredible photos and detailed videos of your products. Think of it like this: every company is a media company. You want to make media part of your business from the very start. If you ignore it, it will always be one of the primary factors preventing you from scaling.

When you are starting out, great media will do most of the selling by making your product stand out. But as you scale, it will be essential to sharing your brand’s story. Your media is your resume. It’s the difference between being perceived as someone working out of their garage vs. a brand that you instantly fall in love with.

Tip 3: Marketplaces

Selling CNC products on online and in person marketplaces is already very popular. (Because it works!) Local farmers markets, Facebook marketplace, Etsy, and even Ebay and Amazon are fantastic places to start selling. Marketplaces are also a great way to test the popularity of new product variations and designs.

Remember, in a marketplace your product is compared directly with it’s competition, so it goes without saying, great media and unique design will help you win.

In addition, it may be tempting to get carried away selling many different products on marketplaces just because you see others doing it. The biggest problem with selling in marketplaces is that consistency is mostly out of your control. You may have a high ranking item getting many sales today, but one bad review or better competition could change that overnight.

Selling in a crowded marketplace is a great way to validate interest in a product and get you started making sales. While you can build your entire business around selling in marketplaces (many do), you will always be fighting for marketshare per product in order to scale.

Tip 4: Branding

Branding is the relationship between your business and its target audience. How do you build a relationship? You for relationships with people you trust. Who do you trust? You trust people who share your values.

It is the job of your business to represent your audience’s values. This is the most critical step to escaping the side hustle stage of your CNC business. You are not selling a product. No one cares about your product. You are selling the lifestyle your audience desires to have.

If you are milling custom kitchen cabinets, your goal should not be to position yourself as “custom kitchen cabinets”. There will always be someone who will out compete you on product. You should instead help people understand the feeling of tearing out those ugly old cabinets and transforming the space into something beautiful. What is it like to wake up in the morning and enter the new kitchen for a cup of coffee? What is it like when you show off this new space to friends?

If you can tell the stories of what life is like with your product, you can sell the dream of this lifestyle. And if you can sell the dream people will buy your product because they know you will give them the desired outcome, while everyone else is just giving them kitchen cabinets.

Branding is the core of scaling any B2C business.

Tip 5: Custom Orders

One of the unique benefits to making CNC products is that you could customize each unit. One of the easiest ways to increase average order value is to give your customers an option to customize their order. A simple name engraving could go a long way, but with CNC the sky is the limit in what you can customize.

Obviously, the more customization per unit, the more complex production can be. When you are designing your products and production process, consider making customization part of the process from the start.

Another way to offer customization is to sell “limited collections” of your product. For example you could do seasonal or holiday collections. Adding a unique twist on an otherwise standard product for a limited time could be exactly what it takes to get someone to finally commit to buying, due to fear of missing out.

Conclusion

Choosing B2C for a CNC business is likely the standard approach for most people. It comes with many challenges, but those can be solved with the right strategy. Amazing media will make your product stand out, this will set you apart when selling on marketplaces. Marketplaces will help you bring in your first sales, test new products, and can even be a large source of revenue. Once you get better at developing your brand through your pictures, videos, website, and social media, you could re-invest the money you make from marketplace sales into running ads to drive traffic to your website. And finally, finding unique ways to increase average order value such as customization could help you scale much faster.

At the end of the day, the world needs more people who make things. The only thing better than making products people use and love, is building a brand people love. Brands show people what is possible, and the best part about CNC is that anything is possible.

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