Looking for feedback: A site where you can buy and sell your own beer kits

Hi folks! I'm slowly getting ready to give this idea a try and I was hoping to get some feedback from you good people. I'd like to start a marketplace where home brewers can list their recipes for sale as complete, made to order beer ingredient kits. I'm fleshing the idea out at www.kitlab.co - again, just wondering if you guys have any opinions on the idea? Seem interesting? Not so much?

Thanks for any thoughts you might have on the topic!
Ryan

So, if someone specifically states that it uses Simpsons Pale Chocolate malt, you won't sell the kit unless you have the specified malt in hand, or would you  sub out Briess Pale Chocolate just to keep things sane?

I don't see the recipes yet. Are you gonna post full details of the recipes? and also are you going to have some type of ratings system in place?

Also what about a social aspect? Will there a palce to talk about recipes with the creator or perhaps thoughts about improvements to a recipe?

Also a search function. Like "recipe that uses 1056, pilsner, and cascade". As well as a tierd structure system like click on "American Barleywine" and then list all the recipes available for that category. Perhaps breaking it down even further as there is more and more recipes.

Will it be possible to download the recipe in some type of Beersmith importable format?

Wow, that sounds like a lot of work! Having had to prep and pack recipes for a LHBS, I can safely say that more than 50 recipes is unmanageable because of the specialty malts.

• I'll echo the sourcing concern.
• Hops could be difficult.
• If you have to change a malt or ingredient, does the original author still get credit?
• What if two people upload the same recipe, or you get recipes that have been previously published?
• How would a recipe author know that you sold a kit? Or how many?

Having owned and managed a lot of beer related businesses, I know that the average return on costs has to be 5:1 to make a profit. With a commission of $1 per gallon, that starts a 5 gal. kit price at $25. I'm not sure you'll get that when compared to other online sources.

Lastly, how will you account for the commissions in your accounting? It's money you don't have, but will pay taxes on. Will you 1099 everyone?

I don't expect you to answer all of my questions, and I'm not trying to s**t on your idea. It's just feedback for though.

It seems that it may be a monumental task. And as posted prior to me, the cost to profit as well as the need to carry HUGE inventories, would be daunting.
I would see a Northern Brewer or Grape and Grainery  or another company like that, trying something like this, as they already have the basic company, and this would or could be another facet to it. But to start from the ground up may be a bit overwhelming.
In any case, good luck! If you can make money from your hobby, then that is the ideal!