Updated: 5/1/23

There is an incredible gentleman in Indiana who has been a key to the growth of our website. I won't say his name, but I will mention a conversation I shared with him many years ago. He said there three options we could offer to our customers - low prices, high quality, and fast turnaround on orders. But then he said we could only pick two of those options. What? I don't believe this.

By keeping our business small and with a strong work ethic, I've always thought we (me and my wife) could offer excellent prices, very reliable products, and super-fast order processing. For the most part, I think we've been successful doing that.

But it seems like everything costs a lot more these days, doesn't it? In 20 years of business, I've never seen as many cost increases as we've had in the last few months. Our cost on some products has nearly doubled. Now we are seeing absolutely insane cost increases on adhesives, wood veneer, edge banding, vacuum bags, and brass fittings. The highest increase (300%) has been on PVC pipe used in our EVS-2 and V4 kits.

Even the cost for boxes has skyrocketed recently. One of the most frustrating increases is on shipping costs (up more than 8%) and that is because I've gone to great lengths to keep our rates reasonable.

I want to assure you that Christine and I are doing everything we can to keep our prices as affordable as possible. We have exhaustively attempted to negotiate for better pricing from our suppliers. In some cases, this means we've had to agree to stock more of the product then we normally would. In other cases, we've had to find more competitive suppliers. Unfortunately, there are several products that we've simply had to drop from our website because the price increases were unbearable.

Who knows what this year will hold? I have no idea, but I promise that we will lower our product prices if/when our costs come down on them. And I know that my wife and I will do everything we can to continue offering great veneering products with affordable prices that are shipped as fast as possible.

Cheers,
Joe