Stick Enterprises accepts Paypal.

Yes, but you still have to give a phone call or email to actually order the items. If, at least for some items (the small stuff like I mentioned earlier), extra time on the phone (as well as the charges) or writing emails and follow-ups could be avoided. Less personal? A little bit, yes, but certainly Stick Enterprises would not have a radical paradigm shift to the kind of impersonal service that one finds with Amazon.com. It would also be a huge time-saver, as well as a cost-saver, for both S.E. and its customers.
But if it doesn't happen: it's not a deal-breaker for me, by any means.

The electronic ordering of strings would be beneficial for someone kinda shy like me who is very uncomfortable cold calling and asking for things. I always, ALWAYS feel like I'm bothering someone. Even if there's money involved and it is their job to monitor phones, I feel like I'm inconveniencing them. It is very helpful that everyone at SE is very friendly and warm.

+1 to AndyJ there.

But I made the call and, after three goes, got through and made my order.

And it was pretty quick, despite my nervous chattiness.

Luc might have had the best suggestion, an online ordering format for the common Stick tunings and accessories. We already have the custom tuning order form on our SE site. String sets are usually the most urgent item. That's what you need post haste, hopefully just in time for the gig or session.

We could have online shopping for the "Stick" family of 4ths/5ths tunings in heavy, medium and light gauges, and with the price tallied at the bottom. Included on such a shopping list would be all the Stick accessories - stands, cases, wrenches, straps, hardware, lesson books, CDs, DVDs and T-shirts (interesting new ones coming soon).

So far, we've taken string orders by telephone and email because there are so many possibilities - reversed sides, flipped sides, lefties, every conceivable set of intervals. It never seemed practical to automate string orders, especially the rarer custom tunings.

The Stick is a "blank slate", as I like to say. It's hardware will accept any gauge string at any string position - a blessing to the musician customer but sometimes a bit of a curse to us the supplier (confusion and miscommunication creeps in).

Now I must reply to the "Koolade" metaphor,. Doesn't that kind of box us all in (to say the least)? AFAIK, we're a recreational community of musicians world wide who pursue a new way of playing on strings and have found a relatively new instrument to go with it. Nothing more, nothing less, except that recreational innovation has huge cultural potential.

Our customer service is well characterized here, and yes we are the Mom and Pop of an industry and market that we created. Many thanks to all of you here for noticing.

Man oh man I can't say how much I would love a shirt with a great big Stick-man logo front and center. That's such a cool image. I find myself being mesmerized by it on numerous occasions.

just to add to Emmett's post.

SE's business is personal and customized in many ways, but it doesn't have to be for everyone and every transaction. It would certainly be good for some customers to be able to shop this way, there's no denying that.

I'll look into it and see what implementation of it makes the most sense. currently among standard offernings for accessories SE has 35 standard string sets in light medium and heavy gauge. Over 100 CDs by dozens of Stick artists, DVDs, books, cables, stands, and Ts...

Thanks for all the good vibes on dealing with Emmett, Cambria and Yuta you all. It's a pleasure to be associated with such fine folks. No Koolaide required...

On may 1st, I sent an e-mail order to SE for a replacement tuner and 4 sets of strings.

5 days later, I received an answer from Cambria who wrote the tuner would be GIVEN TO ME free of charge and I would get a quote for the strings in a couple of days.

1 week later (yesterday), I got the quote for the strings and a choice of 2 shipment rates.

I chose a shipment rate, paid via Paypal, and got a confirmation today from Cambria that my order is on its way.

Now, this is what I call a perfect service.

The digital world has unfortunately eroded our patience.

Instant gratification rules (as does frustration).

Speed prevails over quality. It's so easy to download a PDF that we don't understand that sending physical goods needs TIME.

Making things properly also need time. I'd rather wait a couple of weeks and receive the right tuner and the right strings, than having the wrong items rushed to me.

Thank you so much Emmett, Yuta, Cambria and all the SE family for your time and care

Would an automated system make any significant difference?

I've always been under the impression that delayed responses to email are simply because SE gets backed up fulfilling orders. Even if I can place an order for strings or CDs etc through an automated form on their website, I'm still going to have to wait my turn before Cambria pulls and packages my strings, CDs.

Edit: However, an automated system would help by letting the customer know that his/her inquiry has been received, and that someone will respond as soon as possible. I use such a system myself, in fact.

--
ramuji

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Hello again, all

This has kicked off rather a longer discussion than I expected. I knew that SE was a small, busy company with a small, hard-working staff and I wanted others' experience of dealing with SE by email. I've been lurking here for a couple of years and comment on service from SE is always positive so I wondered why my experience should be less so. I was happy to leave a bit of time for an answer, I was just getting paranoid that no answer at all was forthcoming after what I regarded as rather a long time. As one of the shy ones that AndyJPro mentioned I was twitchy about phoning up and annoying someone who was *just about to reply* to my mail, for all I knew. It was really just the lack of a reply of any sort that bothered me.

I'm glad that other people get quick replies from SE, even if I don't, and I have now spoken to Cambria (who was very friendly and helpful and got me a reply to a specific hardware query that evening) and gotten my strings/book ordered. I do feel that it should be possible to provide a simple webform to order "stock" items though -- how much customisation can one do to a CD? It wouldn't need a full shopping cart functionality, just a bit of javascript or something with a follow-up for payment.

Actually, if I could get SE to change one thing about their website it would be to make the font size bigger. They don't need to be Amazon, but they do need to be more legible -- whenever I load up the website I have to tweak the point size in firebug.