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As you know, it’s officially less than 24 hours before we close up for the year. It doesn’t mean that we stop working entirely, indeed we will still be on board for the week leading up to Christmas to get orders out as fast as possible and we may have a last minute surprise or two.

So as is often the case with SBG we don’t ever really take a ‘switch off all the lights and go home’ style holiday..

But just before we finish up for 2020 – there is one last addition I have been pushing for for over 2 years now for the Ryujin Custom Katana line..

BLACK ITO WITH BLACK RAYSKIN!!

Yes, that’s right – one of my favorite historical tsuka ‘color’ combinations, black ito over black rayskin is now available to use to make a dark themed Katana (or iaito)!

It’s only available on the Katana and the iaito series at the moment, but it opens up some very cool design opportunities and I for one am very excited to see it added to the line up!

From Sunday the 20th of December to Monday the 11th of January 2021 the SBG Sword Store will be officially on vacation.

By officially on vacation, what this really means is that we will still have a skeleton crew working and I will also be checking in every few days to make sure nothing too urgent has popped up – otherwise I will be using the time for working on other aspects of the site (there is always so much needed to be done at SBG, there really is no time for a totally ‘unplugged’ holiday – not that I mind that much. I love what I do!).

Anyway, as we get closer to Christmas we are already seeing an increase in shipping damage and rough handling, so if you have not got your Christmas sword shopping sorted yet – time is up, you need do something about it now before it is too late..

As we get closer to the official store holiday period I may dig up a few specials specifically designed to ship fast in time for Christmas for anyone who has indeed left it to the last minute.

Anyway, hope you have some holidays coming to you soon – here’s hoping 2021 will be a better year than this one.. (would not be hard!).

Seasons Greetings,

• Paul Southren

“It must be 2020” so I have heard many times when describing something that goes totally awry.. And that very much applies to the aftermath of orders from over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales period..

For a start, all of the warehouses we depend upon for shipping are short staffed due to Covid restrictions. At the same time, with many new orders to process, a critical piece of software we use decided to add to the chaos by crashing (and remains crashed as techs work on it).

And to make it a ‘perfect storm’ and top it all off in a way that is ‘so very 2020’, a key staff member who processes new orders was suddenly struck down with a virus (not Covid, thankfully – but it took her out of commission at the worst possible time and she is only now getting back in the saddle).

Add all of these factors together, and you have quite a bottleneck – especially after so many people took advantage of the huge savings on offer over the sales event weekend.

To this end, we are all doing everything humanly possible to get any and all outstanding and unshipped orders out without too much of a delay – but please be aware that due to the fantastic run of bad luck we have just had, delays ARE to be expected. But please rest assured, we are on the case and everything should be caught up by early next week at the latest..

Thanks for bearing with us!

October has been a crazy month, so many irons in the fire right now – and fires that need putting out – a crazy month in a crazy world..

But it is what it is…

Forge Direct is finally reaching the last of the backorders that killed production for months, some products are selling way too fast to keep in stock for much longer, and in general ‘it’s a jungle out there’..

But it’s not all doom and gloom, just 24 hours ago we FINALLY were able to start selling the Project Sword at times we thought was not going to be able to be completed – our collaboration with BCI to create our interpretation of Links Masters Sword..

Check it out over on our sister sites blog..

And as the month draws to a close, the late Cas Iberia shipment originally due in September is about to land – so stand by for the last restock of the year..! As CAS are the distributors for Hanwei, Dragon King, Legacy Arms, Kingston Arms (and many more) stand by to see a lot of unique blades come back in stock, some for the first time in a long time..

Will update you all again soon. Take care out there.

Our fellow sword brothers and sisters around the world have had a very hard time the last couple of years – at it’s worse, we closed down every single Non North American shipment earlier this year. But the time has come to re-evaluate the situation.

At the end of the day, there are a handful of countries that still allow USPS (United States Postal Service) shipments – so we have added in most of the countries that we could ship to before.

But more than just this, we are also in the process of updating the page on Forwarding Services, as we have found a few that seem ‘weapon’ friendly, or at least tolerant.. But we need more information, more feedback from International buyers who purchased within the last 3 months or so on the SBG Forums and Facebook.

So please, help us to help you guys and let us know your country, what the item was and how it all went..

DISCUSS ON THE SBG FORUM

DISCUSS ON FACEBOOK

Will a solution be found? Well, the time has come to try our hardest.. So please share this information with every Non North American sword collecting friend so they can weigh in and we can, it is hoped, get the clearest picture of where we are up to now and where things are headed..

Thanks all,

• Paul