Some might have noticed that no brushes are currently available for purchase from our website. The last one (a 28 mm Ivory Atlas) was adopted a couple of days ago.
Now we're going to make some changes. We haven't worked out all the details, and chances are we'll hit some bumps (and possibly drop a wheel in the ditch now and then) as we move forward. Please bear with us.
Here's an outline of what we have in mind. I'll share more as we have more to share, but feel free to ask questions in the meantime.
1. I don't expect to go back to working toward an online shop stocked with lots of brushes representing a broad range of handle styles, sizes and materials. What we do plan to do is develop a regular stock of 3-4 basic handles made from 3-4 materials. Candidates include the Chief, PK-47, and Falstaff in 26 mm. We might eventually add one or more 28 mm variants, but probably not at the start. In any case, we'll keep it fairly simple with an objective to make some basic Paladin brushes available on a regular basis (likely with some rotation) at conservative price point, which we haven't settled yet, but I'd like to offer something like a 26 mm Ivory (or the like) Chief with a good badger knot for $140. possibly less depending on the material and the knot.
2. I hope to continue doing a few (maybe three or four) LE/SE offerings over the course of a year. Cody has started his own business, so anything involving complex engraving will depend on his ability to commit necessary time and attention.
3. We'll resume offering pre-orders of particular brushes. Frequency will depend on what else is in the works, but I envision once every month or two. FWIW, if we ran a pre-order process on one handle style/size combination every month, it would take close to five years for us to to work through all those we've introduced to date. In five years I'll be 75. More time goes into making brushes the way we go about it than most would imagine. And I'm not up to running machines for as many hours a day as I used to regularly when we were working hard to catch up with demand. Granted, demand generally isn't what it used to be. But then I'm not either, and that trend is bound to continue.
4. Just for fun, we'll probably drop a few "non-standard-stock" handles and brushes in the shop every month of so. When we run pre-order offerings, we generally make some extra handles as a hedge against the risk of some issue cropping up. Random spot drops would be a way for us to offer those.
5. I may try taking some custom orders (absolutely no more than a few in any month). If so, I'd expect to give priority to established customers.
6. Going forward, we don't plan to set a knot into any handle before we have an order for it. We might possibly offer handles for sale without knots, but that remains undecided.
7. I'm going to go missing from time to time for camping trips and the like. My wife (Pam) will take on a larger role in managing communication. Trust me; she's better at it. My memory sucks, and I don't expect it to improve.
8. I really don't want to turn more than 40 handles per month on average. We were producing 900-1,000 brushes per year from 2016 through 2022. No matter what demand might be, that will never happen again. I'd say 400-500 in a year would be the maximum.
9. We've gathered a good number of handles that had accumulated over the years in various places, many in hiding. Cody was hoarding most of them in his shop (which has moved from Kansas, to two different addresses in Oregon, back to Kansas temporarily, and then to two different locations in Colorado about 100 west of us with a lot of mountains in between). We'll probably do a few old-fashioned drops to clear those out.
10. We've always struggled with how to balance 1) recognizing and rewarding loyalty with 2) maintaining fairness in relation to new customers and those who very reasonably can't justify owning more than a few shaving brushes. But we're going to try to do better in that regard.
So, stay tuned.
Now we're going to make some changes. We haven't worked out all the details, and chances are we'll hit some bumps (and possibly drop a wheel in the ditch now and then) as we move forward. Please bear with us.
Here's an outline of what we have in mind. I'll share more as we have more to share, but feel free to ask questions in the meantime.
1. I don't expect to go back to working toward an online shop stocked with lots of brushes representing a broad range of handle styles, sizes and materials. What we do plan to do is develop a regular stock of 3-4 basic handles made from 3-4 materials. Candidates include the Chief, PK-47, and Falstaff in 26 mm. We might eventually add one or more 28 mm variants, but probably not at the start. In any case, we'll keep it fairly simple with an objective to make some basic Paladin brushes available on a regular basis (likely with some rotation) at conservative price point, which we haven't settled yet, but I'd like to offer something like a 26 mm Ivory (or the like) Chief with a good badger knot for $140. possibly less depending on the material and the knot.
2. I hope to continue doing a few (maybe three or four) LE/SE offerings over the course of a year. Cody has started his own business, so anything involving complex engraving will depend on his ability to commit necessary time and attention.
3. We'll resume offering pre-orders of particular brushes. Frequency will depend on what else is in the works, but I envision once every month or two. FWIW, if we ran a pre-order process on one handle style/size combination every month, it would take close to five years for us to to work through all those we've introduced to date. In five years I'll be 75. More time goes into making brushes the way we go about it than most would imagine. And I'm not up to running machines for as many hours a day as I used to regularly when we were working hard to catch up with demand. Granted, demand generally isn't what it used to be. But then I'm not either, and that trend is bound to continue.
4. Just for fun, we'll probably drop a few "non-standard-stock" handles and brushes in the shop every month of so. When we run pre-order offerings, we generally make some extra handles as a hedge against the risk of some issue cropping up. Random spot drops would be a way for us to offer those.
5. I may try taking some custom orders (absolutely no more than a few in any month). If so, I'd expect to give priority to established customers.
6. Going forward, we don't plan to set a knot into any handle before we have an order for it. We might possibly offer handles for sale without knots, but that remains undecided.
7. I'm going to go missing from time to time for camping trips and the like. My wife (Pam) will take on a larger role in managing communication. Trust me; she's better at it. My memory sucks, and I don't expect it to improve.
8. I really don't want to turn more than 40 handles per month on average. We were producing 900-1,000 brushes per year from 2016 through 2022. No matter what demand might be, that will never happen again. I'd say 400-500 in a year would be the maximum.
9. We've gathered a good number of handles that had accumulated over the years in various places, many in hiding. Cody was hoarding most of them in his shop (which has moved from Kansas, to two different addresses in Oregon, back to Kansas temporarily, and then to two different locations in Colorado about 100 west of us with a lot of mountains in between). We'll probably do a few old-fashioned drops to clear those out.
10. We've always struggled with how to balance 1) recognizing and rewarding loyalty with 2) maintaining fairness in relation to new customers and those who very reasonably can't justify owning more than a few shaving brushes. But we're going to try to do better in that regard.
So, stay tuned.
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