I think we have the best customers you could wish for. Back at work after three weeks off – the first time we have more or less closed the shop for so long. In previous years we have come in during the holidays to send out orders. We were a little worried about how you would react to waiting so long for your things, but today we found that the worry was unfounded. It took me over an hour to sort out all the orders that were waiting. I had kept an eye on orders coming in, but had not looked closely at what you ordered – and you really have ordered all sorts of things, and lots of them. Many thanks for being willing to wait much longer than usual. The rest of the morning went on unpacking the deliveries that arrived while we were away: Thomas Flinn, Lost Art Press and Lie-Nielsen. Before DHL came just after two, over 40 orders had been picked and packed and are on their way to you. Tomorrow we continue with the remaining 100 or so orders. I wrote that we hoped everything would be shipped tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest, but I am afraid I will need Thursday too – I hope that is OK for those of you waiting.
We heard that Christopher Schwarz (founder of Lost Art Press, a popular author and blogger and a well-known name in fine woodworking) and Narayan Nayar (photographer of, among other books, Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley) were planning a short tour of Scandinavia and a couple of days in Stockholm. We asked whether they would like to come by the shop and talk with you for a few hours, and both thought it sounded fun. It was short notice and in the middle of the holidays, so we have heard that many who wanted to come could not, but quite a few still came by and we hope you got some answers or tips. We also planned a little surprise: we heard that Jögge Sundqvist (aka Surolle) would pass through Stockholm the same day and asked whether he would like to stop by, say hello to Chris and Narayan and talk about his two books that Lost Art Press has published in English. He was happy to, and it became a nice reunion for them.
We offered to show Chris and Narayan around Stockholm during a few of the days they were here. They visited Julia Kalthoff and saw how she makes her little marvel of a carving axe. We also took them to Skansen and the Vasa Museum, where they got a good dose of Swedish craftsmanship. On the last day they visited Skokloster Castle, where we had booked a private tour so they could see the turning workshop. We had been told firmly not to touch anything, and you could see Chris's fingers itching; when the staff handed him a pair of gloves after a while, he was like a child in a sweet shop. The visit lasted much longer than planned, and Chris explained a great deal from his own research into old tools, so even the staff learned new things. It felt like a very successful visit for everyone involved.
After his visit to Sweden Chris wrote posts on the Lost Art Press blog about what happened here, including one of the tool chests we have in the shop and some of the things he looked at in Skokloster: Workbench curiosities at Skokloster and The Swedish tool chest.
A year or so ago we created a category collecting products related to a particular person, someone who in different ways has put Sweden on the craft map. We started with James Krenov and have now added Jögge Sundqvist, in a category of its own where we will gather all our craft profiles. We would also like to apologise once more for the trouble that affected more than 1,700 of you a couple of weeks ago. The program that sends stock alerts went haywire after an update and a setting changed, so it emailed everyone with an alert even though the product had not been restocked. More than 2,200 emails went out, and when I tried to switch the function off during the night, all of them went out once more – and then another round the following day while we were fixing it. The problem is now solved and the emails that go out should be correct. There is never a good time for something like this, and this was a particularly bad one, as we had just received and were about to list deliveries that many of you had registered interest in. It became a bit like "crying wolf": many of you wondered why products were sold out right after the email, and I spent many hours answering emails and trying to restore all the alerts. We sent a special newsletter and an email to everyone affected, and we hope you now know what happened. At the same time we discovered that many alerts had never been sent even though products had been restocked, and that some Incra products wrongly said they would not be in stock until a certain date, although they could be bought. All of this is now fixed. So if you have been waiting to order Incra because of this, there is no need to worry: we have all Incra in stock and ship as soon as your order arrives. And just as a reminder in these drop-shipping times: we never knowingly sell products that we do not have in stock for immediate delivery. Right now there are 2,894 products on the shelves in the shop in Farsta. A new delivery from Veritas will soon add about 40 more. Over the last two months we have added around a hundred products, many of which have not been available in Sweden or Europe for several years, from Lie-Nielsen and Incra for example. We have several orders placed with our manufacturers and will order more during the autumn to restock both old and brand-new products. It may sound as if we are beating our chests and saying we are the biggest, best and fastest, but of course we are not; we are very humble about this. Our wish is that when you look for craft-related products, your first thought will be to look at Rubank Verktygs, because we have the most complete range and fast deliveries. And when you place an order with us and it reaches you quickly and without problems, the trust you show us warms us inside. So thank you again for choosing to shop with us!
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