SAKA-CHOJI. Give me some advice

So I took a quick look at your link. And I noticed some things. I'll start with the good.

Site is easy to use, you have options I don't see often with regard to tsuba, habaki and saya. The high end blades look great, but the hadori work doesn't always follow the hamon and this is a drawback.


Now to the part that needs improvement.

Is it possible to combine different blade steel with different hamon? If yes, it would be better to have an option blade steel and then a different option for hamon, then all the extra add ons like bohi, horimono etc.

Do you offer full wrap Same'gawa on tsuka? When looking at blades that have traditional looking blades I prefer to have the tsuka in a full wrap instead of panels.

It would be nice to choose what way the ito is wrapped, for starters just hineri-maki and katate-maki is enough.

When at checkout it doesn't show the total amount. This is probably just a programming thing.

Good luck!
Stalker

It looks fine to me. One thing I don't get is the hon-sanmai-gitae option is ~$2400, much more expensive than the other options. However, it doesn't have any obvious lines to the hada (similar to your example above). I would think anyone selecting this option would insist on a visible hada. Maybe if you used grass ashes as the flux for the folding as is traditional in Japan? That being said, the hamon you have above is nice and crisp, the white bits are well polished, and you can actually see the weld line some places.

It's odd to me that you pride yourself on time consuming to forge blades and polishes, but most of the blades/koshirae in your options still seem to be fairly budget. Then, even if you choose the $2400 blade, it comes with a $50 reproduction tsuba. There really isn't much room in the market for budget blades, and you seem to be positioning yourself as a luxury producer, so I think you should also have more luxury options in the koshirae, and more variety to your upscale blades. If you're going to spend more than $500 on the blade alone though, it has to have all the features you'd expect from a Japanese blade - a nice hamon, nice hada, nice polish. Any of these missing, and I'm not sure whose going to buy it. If you're going to spend a long time folding steel for any part of the sword, the folding lines have to be visible in the end, otherwise you're wasting your time.

We have considered the issue of delivery time, so we provide the completed blades. If we make both Hamon and Horimono optional, it will produce more variants. I will add the Samegawa with fully wrapped handles to the section in the future. If you need to choose Hamon and Horimono, you can leave us a message. It is possible to give us more production time

Thank you for your consideration, I understand that these blade customizations can create issues with part supply so take your time.
It would be a good idea to advertise your Tsuka construction as cracked and poorly shaped Tsuka is a big concern for higher level buyers.
Also I recommend sending a review sample to someone to show off your blades ability, it will create much more confidence for new buyers.

I agree with the above.
When you offer some high end blades with nice polishing and lamination, it feels like a crime to mount them with low end cheap cast fittings.
A thing I really like with DragonSword (now ShadowDancer Sword) for example is their line of "better" fittings (fuchi kashira set for $199) which is several orders of magnitude superior to the typical fittings used by all vendors in Longquan.

Actually my dream for a drop down menu vendor would be something like Tozando but for shinken, using fittings from sources like Yamato Budogu, Giheya and Noshudo.

The way I see the current market is this.
90% of vendors in Longquan offer the same identical product with the same identical fittings and they are targeting mainly the sub $300 category, a market where most people only care about "how much does the sword cost".
A few vendors tried to stand above by offering some extras like a choice of hamon, a hishigami wrap, a better quality samegawa, but that doesn't really make them special as this extras tend to apply to another market category (the mid tier people) that is willing to pay extra $ for those feats but, like in my case, is discouraged by the cheap repro cast fittings, which totally look terrible on a sword with a nicer blade, a good polishing, upgraded samegawa and hishigami. Not worth it.

I believe the only way to effectively stand out is indeed to offer also a better set of fittings from the aforementioned Japanese vendors, and the options you mentioned with tsuka, habaki and polish.

Basically something above the regular LQ vendor (sub 300) but below Zsey (900+). That is the spot to hit to stand out, the $400/600 market.

After reading everyone's opinions, I am a bit confused now. I need another channel to add good tsuba, but they are usually some isolated Japanese returned products that cannot be paired as a whole. Using these tsuba also requires our own fuchi and kashira. Will someone like this combination? And its price is also very expensive. If we still use accessories produced by Longquan, we can only start with independent design and mold making. Before opening up this market, this operation requires a lot of time and money, and the styles that can be designed are very limited, because an independent design usually costs around 30000 RMB. At present, we also have some of these styles, and I will put them up later.

It is worth mentioning that I have decided to listen to everyone's opinions, which is to produce some sturdy and beautiful tsuka, as well as all wrapped samegawa, tsuka maki with different tying methods. There are also more beautiful and high-end blades, which I can easily achieve at present.

Good advice from Arlequin. It's probably a good idea to look at offerings from the other producers in the high end price range. For instance, Hanwei and Motohara. Hanwei has a handful of high end swords with only one choice for fittings. Motohara make higher end fittings (looks like in house). Zsey also seem to make higher end fittings, maybe they went the 30,000 RMB route with a small selection of fittings. Even if there's only a few options, still makes sense for the customer if they're going to spend high end money for the blade. Just be careful you don't make the mistake Zsey did (and many other producers trying to expand into the high end of the market), they became popular then couldn't keep the quality level consistent with a high order volume, and the market lost confidence in them. For high end swords, you need a track record of consistent finishing quality otherwise people won't be comfortable with the risk.