Hi Thea. I run a one-person OSHW business too. [1]
Assuming your volume is greater than a dozen pcs/month, you're doing both yourself and your international customers a massive disservice by not outsourcing fulfillment and logistics (at least for international buyers).
I went to order a single nut from your store, and the shipping to Australia was $35. Of course, this makes small purchases prohibitively expensive. But more than that, it shows that you don't care about your buyers from outside of the US, and conversely shouldn't expect them to care about you.
This especially matters if/when your products become cloned. Piracy is a service problem, and any markets you are not serving properly will be serviced by the copycats.
I make a small electronic gadget in the US, and international shipping is a nightmare. I'm also a build-to-order business with a low sales volume. My recourse has been to simply limit myself to domestic sales while sharing my design. I am guessing that some of my products "leak" out of the US by people ordering through a forwarding company.
There is some kind of insane massive asymmetry in international shipping costs that really does make it prohibitive to ship anything out of the US.
However, if you've figured out how to do this well, I'd love to read more about it. Maybe another blog is in order. ;-) There are some things that are mysteries to me, such as what kind of inventory level is necessary to make everything run smoothly but without losing your shirt.
Yeah, I do have a tendency to shit on other people's ideas without offering a constructive alternative. I should probably stop doing that...
Anyway, I don't know how applicable 3PL is for products that are built to order, but for something mass produced it really is as simple as putting barcode stickers on them (I use a $50 desktop label printer for this) and then sending a box of them to a Chinese 3PL company (ChinaDivision etc.).
This can and should be done from day 1 (again, probably not for bespoke items unless volume is high!), and will cover basically every country on Earth except Iran and North Korea with cheap and reliable logistics.
Loudly trumpet that shipping is free (or fixed cost) no matter the buyer's location, and you'll get a lot of goodwill from buyers in underserviced markets.
The next step from there is to set up an Amazon FBA presence in various markets worldwide. Even if you don't sell much inventory through their site, you can take advantage of Multi-Channel Fulfillment to send stock cheaply from a local warehouse.
I pay something like US$50 a month to be a part of their logistics network, plus around US$5 per package for fulfillment and logistics regardless of location.
Regarding inventory levels, if possible I'd recommend always holding enough stock to cover 6 months' worth of baseline sales at all times. If your product relies on word of mouth for discovery, a feature on a site like Hackaday (and the ripple effect that causes) could easily cause 3-6 months' worth of sales in a week. I learned this the hard way last year.
Best of luck with your business, and if you want to have a chat about logistics feel free email admin at espotek dot com. It's something I really care about and it kills me to see so many people do it wrong.
So do I. My answer is to just pass the cost on and swallow the value of my time. So if an order comes in from, say, the UK I just tell the buyer that the price includes US shipping but shipping to their country will cost $$ extra. I invoice them that amount and once they send it, I package it up, fill out the Customs forms and send it.
I don't think I've ever had someone complain about the extra shipping cost: I think they're used to it.
I manufacturer my OSHW in Shenzhen and ship from there, shipping was far cheaper but thanks to Covid that's becoming less and less true, largely because the really cheap shipping was essentially people filling empty space in air-mail containers - and there's so fewer planes flying there just isn't that space. I'm now charging my customers a surcharge (but eating half the extra cost) - it still costs half of what I'd pay if I were shipping from here in NZ.
FWIW, with music gear it is more common that you buy the product from local stores carrying it. Only a few production runs in is a bit early to have good international coverage for that (especially if most of the batch is sold out in preorder anyway, which is what I'd guess at), but from the website that's clearly in the works.
Assuming your volume is greater than a dozen pcs/month, you're doing both yourself and your international customers a massive disservice by not outsourcing fulfillment and logistics (at least for international buyers).
I went to order a single nut from your store, and the shipping to Australia was $35. Of course, this makes small purchases prohibitively expensive. But more than that, it shows that you don't care about your buyers from outside of the US, and conversely shouldn't expect them to care about you.
This especially matters if/when your products become cloned. Piracy is a service problem, and any markets you are not serving properly will be serviced by the copycats.
[1]https://espotek.com/labrador/