After 15 years we have made the biggest change to our webshop. We have now completely swapped the engine under the hood, and we hope it can now run the website like an atomic clock for at least another 15 years. It has been quite a lot of work throughout the winter, trying to work out the easiest way to move all the data – 31,000 orders, 6,500 products, 12,000 customers and a lot of other data – while the old shop had to keep running. Some things were easier to move than others, but in the end more or less everything is in place and the new shop is up and running. There are things that could not be moved over and some things are still left to fix. We hope the new shop will be appreciated by you customers, as it is more stable and has built-in functions that we couldn't get working in the old one and that people have asked for. I will write a little about the new functions later in the newsletter.
On Saturday we are open as usual. On the last Saturday of every month we have extra opening hours so that customers who find it hard to come by on weekdays can come and look at and feel our wares. We also try to have an extra something happening on these days. Either we talk or demonstrate something ourselves, or invited craftspeople/guests show what they work with. This Saturday Karin Sandin will drop by and talk about making your own wax. She is the author of the popular book Vax – en receptbok för möbler och kulturvård (Wax – a recipe book for furniture and heritage care). We have sold it for several years in different batches. It has been sold out for a while, but we have just decided to print a new edition together with Karin. It should be printed and ready for delivery at the end of April. When we decided in the autumn that the "shop" would become a shop with fixed opening hours every weekday, we didn't know how it would turn out. Would we sit around twiddling our thumbs? We have really had no time for that, as you have come in large numbers and we are truly glad about it, since it is always nice to meet you IRL and be able to talk, discuss or show things. In February about 30% of all orders came from the shop and it has continued like that. All we can do is thank you and bow deeply. If you haven't been by, and you are in Stockholm, set aside some time so you can come by Västberga and browse around a bit..
A really large delivery of goods from Veritas and LeeValley is arriving in the next few days. Things have been slow with all our suppliers this winter, as they sold out of their own stock and had to build it up before they could start shipping to us resellers. But now things are starting to loosen up for most of them. Veritas this week, and JessEm will ship shortly with some of their novelties, for example the new router lift. Lie-Nielsen is reportedly going to ship soon too. We will get new items from Japan. The Dubuque aluminium clamps we received during the winter have already sold out, so a new delivery is on its way. From England, Henry Taylor is coming with more tools. A whole pile of books from Lost Art Press is also coming. Just as I am writing this we got an email from Los Angeles: PEC has sent a few boxes of combination squares. So spring is saved! Those of you who have visited the new website have seen that it is quite different from before. As we said, we have tried to bring everything over from the old website. If you have shopped with us before, your order(s) will be there, and if you had an account it will be there too; you should be able to log in with your old password. What we have not been able to move over are your "wish lists", as they were too different between the two systems. If you had asked for an email when a certain product came back in stock, that has come along, so that works. A big change is how you "shop": the system divides customers into three categories, Visitor, Guest and Customer. If you are just browsing and adding things to the cart, you are a Visitor. If you go to the checkout and want to buy, you need to enter your name and email, and then you become a Guest. This means the email you use is registered as a Guest. Nothing other than name and email is saved with us, and you need to enter your address details every time. You have the option to add a password when the order is done, and then an account is created and you become a Customer. Then you can no longer shop as a Guest, and the next time you must log in before going through the checkout. We have understood it as follows: since this software is developed in Europe, EU rules on e-commerce apply and certain functions have to work in a certain way.
One feature that people have asked for is being able to choose where to pick up your delivery. We couldn't have that function in the old shop, but now it is available at checkout. It works for both PostNord and DHL. We have also added PostNord as the default for everyone, and parcels with them are picked up the day after we book them. Free shipping at 3000 SEK excl. VAT now applies to all customers, not only those who had an account and were logged in, as was the case before. You can of course shop via the website and pick up in the shop if you want, just as before. We still have card payments via Stripe and Swish at checkout. You can also shop and pay via your bank. We do not offer invoice payment, for private persons or companies; we stopped that several years ago.
There are things that are not finished, for example the Swedish text needs to be put back onto all products. Some images couldn't be moved over either, so they need to be added again. If you see anything off on any page, we would be grateful if you write a line about it so we can fix it. Likewise, if you have questions about any function or anything else, get in touch and we will see if it can be solved. Right now we only have Swedish kronor in the shop; we will soon have several currencies, we just need to sort that out. The same goes for gift cards; they have not been transferred yet, so if you have one and want to shop with it, get in touch and we will sort it out. We have a whole pile of products waiting to be added to the shop, so drop by the site every now and then so you don't miss anything new and exciting. https://rubank.se/sv/nya-produkter We will try to come back with a new newsletter a little earlier next time, with what is coming in future deliveries.
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