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Just a quick note about the newly added shipping module – while I tested it extensively before roll out, a customer recently emailed me to advise that he was having trouble – and it would appear that there is one ordering scenario that it has trouble getting its ‘head’ around.

If you order more than one sword with a different shipping price (for example, a SBG Katana with free shipping and a Cheness iaito with $30 shipping) the system gets confused and doesn’t know which shipping rate to use – and despite spending the better part of a day trying to teach it this simple concept, it still doesn’t ‘get’ it.. (gotta love computers!).

Anyway, sorry about this – but for the time being if you wish to place an order for more than one product with different shipping rates (i.e. the example above of a free shipping offer and a $30 shipping option) please place two seperate orders.. 🙁

Hopefully I should be able to find a better solution to this shortly – as SBG ships from several different warehouses it’s hard to make the software understand when it thinks everything is coming from the one central spot.

We will figure it out (note – the store and site is still working fine, apart from this one scenario. If someone does find something else not adding up right with the shipping though please let me know and we will get it working like it should).

Thanks all,
– Paul

Over the coming weeks and months I will be spending a lot of time updating the store and working on ways to make my customers experiences better.

Two of these changes have been added in the last couple of days – the first one is a much better and more robust shipping module. In the past we had some orders come in for products that cannot be shipped to some countries, or that did not automatically calculate the shipping cost which created a fair amount of extra work and delayed the order. This has since been fixed, and it would seem the new module is doing a great job.

The second update is an ‘out of stock’ notifier so if you click the order button on a sword that is out of stock you get the option to enter your email address and be notified when it comes back in.

Many more changes and updates are on the books – our goal is and has never been to be the biggest store. The store is, after all, just a way to fund the site and SBG community. So competing with normal sword stores is not something that we want to or will do – the more varied the vendors the better for everyone!

Our goal has always been to highlight a few really good swords that are not widely distributed elsewhere – and do it in a way that makes it as easy and informative for the sword buyer as possible.

More coming on this shortly, we have some very exciting months ahead. 🙂

Talk again soon,
– Paul

Phew, that flu really did mess up my schedule (first time in 7 years I have had a cold or flu, so I felt like I got ‘up to date’ and came down with at least 7 years worth in one go! Lol).

Anyway, there were actually quite a few new products added to the store during the flu downtime – including the 3 for 1 price deal on 3 models of the Hanwei/Tinker Pearce blunt training swords, the latest batch of Hattori Katana (including my favorite, the model 2202) – the last of the $149 Raptor Katana sold and post-flu, recently added, a LAST chance to pick up the Hanwei Yasukuni Colonels Gunto (pictured below).

Oh, and I nearly forgot, we also added one more in stock SBG Katana – the Yukiken (snow sword):

Speaking of the SBG Custom Katana – an official update is coming soon, but batch 18 is nearly finished and will ship out from the forge within the next 2 weeks, so that means we will be gearing up for the next batch VERY soon. For more information on these, please check the SBG custom Katana blog.

Anyway, apologies for the lack of updates – talk to you all again soon!

– Paul

– most notably the fourth addition to the SBG

Hi everyone,

I had been meaning to give an overview of new products added since the start of this month but after completing this months issue of the sword buyers digest came down with a nasty flu and fever. And while I have been working sporadically the whole time, there is a significant email backlog that I am doing my best to answer..

So if you are waiting on a reply from me on something non-urgent please bear with me a little longer, I am trying to address the most urgent emails first at this point – while it’s a good thing to say that I handle my own emails, times like this make it a bit of a nightmare..

I should be caught up soon and will do another proper update then.

Thanks for your patience,

– Paul

Well, it seemed to take forever, but it looks like batch 17 is now finally dealt with – there are still 2 or 3 swords that we are guiding in but for the most part they are all in and the feedback is what makes it all worthwhile..

Emails such as “Your customer appreciation and dedication is something that seems to a lost art nowadays. My katana has arrived and it is beyond all expectations. Thank you and your team for all of your hard work” and “The tsuba and hardware are incredible and the color scheme on the tsuka is better than I expected! I really appreciate the work done here, it is without doubt fantastic! Can’t wait to ‘clear some brush!'” make my day and though it sounds corny, they make the hard work behind each batch worthwhile..

Anyway, from now on all updates will be about batch 18 which is currently in production, and of course the next opening in Feb/March (batch 19) – though stay tuned as there may be one more special offer very (very) soon.

– Paul