Important Information About Ordering, Customer Care, Stock Levels and More
As we wind down our operations, we are making a few changes to our original plan. Please see all the sections below, as we hope to answer all your burning questions!
Stock Levels
We originally planned to put all base metal rings—including anodized aluminum—up at once when we received our final batch from the anodizer. Unfortunately anodizing is taking longer than we expected, and if we keep waiting, we’re worried that it’s going to be a major clusterfudge. So, here’s our new plan:
base metal: We are putting up several sizes of base metal within the next 10 days or so. If you’ve signed up for an out-of-stock notification, you will be the first to know that these sizes are available again. We’ll add more base metal on a weekly basis and with each update will do a blog post and eblast with the sizes we’ve just made live. We will not be carrying our full selection of pack sizes (50, 100, 250, 1,000) in order to put the batches on inventory counters and not oversell. We’ll likely focus on 1,000-piecec packs as that pack size has been our most popular in the past 3 months. (For our huge ring sizes where a pack of 1,000 would be ridiculous, we’ll carry 250 or 100 packs.)
anodized 
aluminum: We’ll also start to add new batches of AA back online within the next 7-10 days. As with the base metal, we’ll do weekly updates with what we’ve added.
In order to get orders out the door as fast as possible, all of our new AA will be non-quality controlled* and therefore reduced in price 10% or more. You should expect some color variation with most batches (if you’ve purchased our “Seconds” you are familiar with this.) If a batch has a lot of variation, we are adding extra rings. Yes, these packs are still eligible for the Buy More, Save More program, so you can save as much as 40% on eligible ring packs. As with the base metal, new AA will only be available in limited pack sizes (for instance, you might be able to purchase 1,000-piece packs, but not 50-piece packs).
*Note that we are still quality-controlling any AA that is needed for backorders, since you guys paid full price for those packs; it is just new AA that will not be QCed.
mixes: We aren’t restocking color mixes once they run out, but we’re working on a blog post with our recipes for mixes so you can make your own!
20ga AA: Due to longer turn-around time than expected, we are unable to restock our 20ga Anodized Aluminum, so purchase what you need while we still have it! (If you have 20ga AA rings on backorder, we’ll process a refund for you as soon as we can, if we haven’t already processed it.) Note that all 20-gauge AA rings currently online are now non-quality controlled.
EC: Last call for enameled copper! When our stock runs out, it runs out for good, so shop now!
kits: In the next week, we’ll release aluminum Gaylemaille kits. At the end of the month, we’ll release Kinged Vipera Berus kits. These are our final releases! (Later in the summer, Rebeca will release Pirouette and colorful Rondo a la Byzantine) Other kits are slowly being discontinued as we run out of stock. If a kit is currently listed as out of stock, it likely won’t be returning. We’d really wanted to be able to bring a lot of kits back in stock, but unfortunately are probably not going to be able to do so.
Order & Shipping Changes
All sales are now final. Be sure you’re ordering what you need, and you’re OK with color variation in our new AA, as we can no longer accept returns or exchanges.
Free shipping is available to US and Canada on orders $250+, not including PDFs. Heads up: free shipping will disappear entirely before we close, so take advantage of it now!
Express shipping has been eliminated. (Our order turnaround time is so long, it didn’t make sense to keep it as an option.)
We are now strictly enforcing our “no combining orders into one shipment” rule. (We actually had this as a rule but bent it on a fairly regular basis, like up to 10 times a day *cough* … but now, we just don’t have the time and resources to do this.) So if you place an order and then place a second order 10 minutes later, they are considered 2 orders and will arrive in separate shipments, with separate shipping charges for each.
Customer Care Changes
As we wind down operations, we are devoting all customer care resources to filling backorders, getting new orders out the door and resolving any shipping/ordering issues. As such, we can no longer answer weave/ring size/product questions or accept orders via email – all orders must be completed through our online shopping cart. If you’ve already sent us a question on or before Friday March 11, we WILL answer that; we just are unable to answer non-order-related questions that come in after that.
If you’d like to post your question to our page on Facebook, we can share it in case anyone has any ideas. Or, you can try posting in any of the following places:
* the Chain Maille group on Facebook
* chainmaille subreddit: maille
* Chainmaillers
* M.A.I.L. forum
* Maillers Worldwide
Thank you for your understanding – we were overwhelmed with hundreds of emails and were not going to be able to answer all of them before we shut down, so we needed to make this change.
Recommended Suppliers
We still plan on posting blog posts with recommended suppliers after we shut down, so stay tuned for that! We cannot keep up with all the individual requests that are coming in for supplier recommendations – so if we don’t get back to you it’s not that we’re ignoring you, it’s that we’re planning on addressing these issues after we close. Right now we need to focus on getting orders out the door. 
“Who Is Your Anodizer?”
We’ve received several emails requesting us to reveal our anodizing source. We spoke with our anodizer about this and are willing to do this on a case-by-case basis. You must meet 3 criteria in order for us to reveal this info to you:
1 – email us a copy of a valid resale license ID (this is a state document, NOT your FEIN) if we don’t already have it
2 – you must be willing to purchase AA in 10-lb batches (yes, a single size and color) as those are the anodizer’s minimums
3 – you must have spent at least $4,000 with Blue Buddha over the course of your customer history. Why this criteria? Well, if you’ve spent that much with us, we trust that you are someone who can meet the 10-lb minimums of the anodizer. Additionally, you’re a top customer of ours and not simply someone who is looking to cut out your anodized jump ring vendor and go directly to a source (I’m NOT interested in pissing off other chainmaille supply companies by giving you info that will cause them to lose business. If you normally buy your AA elsewhere, then keep doing so!) We’d like to help our top customers continue to have access to quality-AA and also send some business to our anodizing company to replace losing Blue Buddha, and so this is a win-win situation!
If you meet the criteria, please send an email to [email protected]
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!