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).

New Knives Available!

It's been 5 months since we last had new knives to offer.......but we finally have some new pieces coming available for sale!

Currently we have about 60 pieces done, 30 of which are already sold to dealers, which leaves about 30 that will make it on the website.

“How much will it cost to have a knife shipped to me?” I have been asked several times. Good question. What I will be doing is packing knives into shipments of 10-25 knives and shipping them from the Philippines to Michigan where my dad will repackage them and ship whatever you order directly to you. The reason I am doing that is to save you shipping cost. It costs a minimum of $30 to ship a knife from here to most of the world. But for my dad to ship from Michigan to most places in the US it is only $6. ...and for him to ship international is typically $13. So your shipping cost will only be the standard $6 (or $13 for outside the US) instead of the $30+ it would cost to ship from here.

I shipped out the first batch of 10 to Michigan today and they should be arriving on Feb 5th. Once that batch arrives ok I will ship a second batch, then a third. I am breaking the order up into multiple shipments in case something happens....plane goes down at sea, custom agent decides they would look better in an incinerator, the package gets stolen, etc.

What I will be doing is listing the knives in 3 different sections on the website. The sections will be under “available knives” and then the sub category will have the title of the anticipated arrival date to Michigan. A sub category named “ready to ship 2-5-2010” would mean the knives are expected to arrive in Michigan on that date So if a knife is to arrive in Michigan on the 5th and you buy it on the 2nd, as soon as the knife arrives my dad will repackage and ship it to you via USPS Priority mail...which typically takes 1-3 days to mst of the US and 10-14days to most of the world.

Some examples of upcoming pieces:

Long Delayed Status update!

Hello everyone,

It's been awhile since I left an update so I thought I would take the time to fill you in. For those of you that didn't know, about 5 months ago I packed up and moved from Michigan, USA to Cebu, Philippines. As you can imagine it's quite an ordeal to move to the other side of the world and it's been taking some time to get settled in.

There have been some bad aspects to the move and some good aspects but so far it's been a good experience overall. On the bad side it's hard to find items here....so it's taken a long while to get all the tools needed to get a workshop up and running. Also there have been things like getting targetted by a pickpocket team (I caught them and got my wallet back thankfully), and just the other day a girl on our street got mugged and stabbed. On the plus side I'm not freezing my butt off in a Michigan winter. I lived in Michigan for all of my life so having it 80-90 degrees out all year round is kind of fun (although I missed the snow on Christmas) And the beaches here are beautiful! Prior to visiting here last year I had only seen the ocean once...now I am on an island quite a bit smaller than the county I used to live in with beaches within 20min drive any direction I go. White sands, palm trees, coral reefs, tropical fish, small limestone cliffs, etc. It took me a week or two of swimming to stop looking 360degrees around me all the time for sharks, but now I worry more about stepping on a sea urchin. One of these days I will pick up an underwater cam and snap some pics for you guys.

Ok now for the knife related stuff....


This month we finally got a workshop setup. It is very basic so we are only making a limited amount of designs... no powdercoating or damascus/san mai for the time being. But we are producing knives and we will have some up for sale soon, maybe tonight.

We are also working on making changes to the website. It's something I have been meaning to do for the last year but I just never had the time. I am working on a FAQ page, more photo albums, and we will be introducing a “pre-order” section to the store soon. The pre-order will allow you to place an order for some of our more popular designs. You will be able to pick the blade finish, the cord wrap colors, etc and we will make it to order. Keep in mind this is for placing an order, and there will be a waiting time before it gets delivered. I will be adding this section because I often get people asking me for designs that are sold out, or sending me messages saying they keep checking my site for certain knives but they don;t catch them in time before they sell out. Now you can just order one and be assured that the first available design that you wanted will be yours.

As I mentioned in the past I will be training someone to help me. Well I started training a co-worker about 3 weeks ago, His name is Glen and he is my fiancees brother. So far he is doing a great job, and he hasn't lost any fingers...so thats a plus. As he learns the trade he will be helping me with some of the basic, but time consuming, tasks of knifemaking. Right now I have him drilling handle holes, rough profiling blades, and hand sanding/buffing blades. I will be doing all the grinding of the blade bevels and all of the heat treating since thats a skill that takes a lot of practice to get right...sometimes years. Having the additional help will allow us to get more blades done...so you guys won't have to wait so long. It will also allow me to expand into areas I didn't have time to before. For example I am working on new designs (the first new design is called the “Karamklaw” and will be shown in the next blog post, and put up for sale soon), and over the next few months I will be offering more steel choices...O1, A2, 5160 are towards the top of my list of steels I will be offering more often (I have worked these steels in the past and like them) and in the next half a year I will be making some out of the CPM steels. These knives will have a higher price tag.

Speaking of higher prices... I will start offering a limited amount of pieces geared more for collections that have higher end materials. Damascus, stabilized wood, mokume, etc. You won't see much of the at first though....we will be working on building inventory of our standard models first.