Life in the Philippines - Goats

I tend to wait til I have time to do a larger post and something fairly important to say.....and then it works out that I never get around to posting. So I will be doing random posts of what life is like here, things we are working on, etc.

My first post is just a quick one on goats....

I never really cared for goats one way or the other til I moved here...now after being around them I kinda like them. The babies are absolutely adorable prancing around and acting like they will butt you, and the adults are kind of fun watching them being curious to whats going on with the humans around them.

The goats here tend to be smaller than the ones I saw in Michigan...the adults only grow to about knee high, maybe slightly higher.

Anyway I have to get back into the shop so heres some quick pics of some local goats.

Update on the Blog

I got so busy I wasn't updating the blog....then to be honest I totally forgot I had a blog until I was updating the website.

In the past I was posting Ecos Knives business related subjects here, but that gets to be a dry subject so what I will do is post the important Ecos Knives news on our "Ecos Knives General News" page, and the blog will be used as for less important news and things going on in our personal lives. Posts will be about blades we are working on, some behind the scenes business stuff people generally don't see, and what life is like in the Philippines, etc.

This will give us more content to post here, which hopefully will get me more motivated to keep up with it!

I spent today making and updating some new pages for the website so I won't do much blogging for a day or two but I plan on eventually doing a few blog posts a week.

To see the new/updated pages on our site click on the following links:

Ecos Knives General News

Life in the Philippines

Knife Terminology

Ecos Knives FAQ

Customers custom order progress page

As always I am very thankful for our devoted customers. The vast majority of our sales are from repeat customers and since to date we do almost no marketing (and no paid marketing at all) most of our new customers are from word of mouth.....people telling friends about us, posting on forums, youtube, etc. We really, really appreciate you all taking the time to do this!

Thank you,

-Jason

Update On The Hack

Just a quick update...

Paypal has indeed refunded the money the hacker stole, they put a freeze on his account, and will be seeing if they can prosecute him. So neither us, nor our customers lost any money, it just inconvenienced us. Customer financial info was NOT compromised since it is stored on Paypals server, not ours.

I checked around the net and found multiple other sites that the same guy had hacked and warned them that they may be hacked. Luckily some of the others got the warning in time which prevented them from getting money taken so at least something good came out of this.

In the meantime I will be leaving the store offline as a web designer does a security check on it to figure out how the guy got in. I may end up moving to a different software completely. Until then all new knives will be listed on Ebay, and we will notify you when they are available.

Thanks,

-Jason

We got hacked!

After having the online store up for 9 months with zero security issues today we found out some lowlife hacked us last week.

We had 2 sales where the payment was rerouted to his Paypal id, and not ours. I have contacted Paypal and a freeze has been placed upon his account and the funds are being returned to the 2 customers that were affected.

I have contacted one of the customers and explained the situation but the other customer did not sign up for a customer account at the website therefor we do not have his contact info.

So Michael S, if you are reading this please contact us so we can further explain matters.

Also by searching for the hackers emails online we found multiple other online stores hit by the same guy....so it was a widespread operation not directed solely at us. I'm hoping the authorities can track him down and throw his ass in jail.

In the meantime I have a webdesigner studying the code to see how he got in. The store will be down until this is determined.

Knives coming available soon will be sold through Ebay until the issue is resolved.

Thank you for your understanding,

-Jason

(PS to all previous customers, don't worry your financial info is stored at Paypal, NOT on our site, so the hacker had no access to it)

3-25-10 Quick Update

The supplies we were waiting on finally arrived so we are finishing up the batch we were working on.

Today I listed a dozen knives in our Ecos Knives website store..... Ecos Custom Knives , and 5 knives on Ebay..... Ecos Knives Ebay .

We are working on our next batch which will have some hamons, some Kiridashi, a Karamklaw or two, and maybe a Karambit, and hopefully a few more acid etched pieces if time permits.

Primarily our concern right now is to get these custom orders that we are overdue on finished up and in our customers hands.

Thank you,

-Jason

Knives available on Ebay

Just a quick message to let you know we listed a few discounted blades on Ebay today. Click here to see our offerings on Ebay

Our next batch is on schedule to be available sometime between March 20th and the first week of April. We are just waiting for a package of supplies to arrive to finish them up.

Just a quick look at some composite we are working on.

This is some composite we are working on to use on our own knives and eventually to resell to other knifemakers and gun smiths to use on their knives and pistol grips. You will be seeing it on our own work starting this month (we have been using our own composite for around 10yrs but the same resins and fabrics aren't available at our new location so we had to come up with some new blends) and sheets of it will be available for sale sometime in May.

The small pieces are just sample swatches made from scraps so we can get an idea how how the different colors look once sealed with resin. They have numerous flaws since we will not be using them.

The full sized sheets have no flaws and can be ground down to vary which color is the predominate color. For example with the green sheet you can have it mostly green with black highlights, or grind it down a tad and have it mostly black with green highlights (as you can see in one area towards the center).