Why Do You Want To Know About My Oven? And What I'm Up To?

This is a good question constant reader, glad you asked! In reply, I'll start by asking you: have you seen the range of wood fired ovens out there now? We regularly do tools for ovens between 75 cm and 180 cm deep and oven chambers as small as 50 cm or as large as 220 cm are not unheard of.

You can see that's quite a range. Yet when I ask people what size their oven is, you know what most of them reply? OH, you know, normal size!

Then there's all the different shaped cooking chambers and the different components of the oven structure itself: some people put a bench in front you could play table tennis on, others have no bench at all. Most ovens have a flue chamber in the front, but quite a few have flues that go up and over the middle and other ovens have no chimney on 'em at all! There's crossbred bread and pizza ovens, hybrid wood and gas ovens, ovens with the firebox underneath the chamber, BBQ pizza ovens, fireplace pizza ovens, chiminea pizza ovens. These days, whatever whacky shaped and sized container you can think of, I can guarantee you someone is cooking pizza in it!

Which is why I can't understand when I look at other company's tool options, how they can just offer a couple of oven tools and then do them in one, or at most two sizes!

I'm proud to say that we offer a wide range of oven tools to [hopefully] cover all the different possibilities AND that we size every single tool to suit the particular oven it's made for. Yup, we custom size and select every tool we make!

Now, it's the middle of 2020 when I'm writing this and we've been making tools since 2007, so we've interrogated a lot of you about your ovens and we know a thing or two about what you need. Only problem is, we've hit a bit of a wall.

I don't want to bore you (no really I don't!), so I'm gonna save the long version of our business story for some sort of blog entry that I hope I'll have the time to write one day (or you could catch my interview on SBS's Small Business Secrets if my fantasies of 'world wide acclaim' ever come true!), but for now, the short version of the story is that we really want to keep custom making your tools. We want to keep offering you that bespoke, tailor made service that is what defines us and keeps us passionate and engaged in our work and at the top of this game BUT we can't keep working at the pace we have been, so we're making a few changes.

First amongst that is we're no longer wholesaling our tools to other retail outlets and online stores. We've had wonderful relationships with a select range of pizza oven stockists across Australia and we still love and recommend them all BUT we just can't meet the demand and to be honest, we are uncomfortable with the lack of control wholesaling brings. You see, when we first started forming these relationships, those businesses were all pretty much bricks and mortar outlets and we worked with them to develop tool sizing that suited THEIR ovens and that was what they stocked for THEIR customers.

In the last couple of years though, they've all developed serious online shops of their own, selling to 'strangers'. People whose oven configurations and sizing is unknown and so the tools they're getting may not be right for the set ups they have. We were a bit uncomfortable with that and also, as our stockists businesses were growing, their orders were growing and well, despite all the business advice in the world that GROWTH IS GOOD, turns out we don't want to grow up to be a factory!

You see, we're craftspeople at heart and we've worked out it's the interaction with you guys that drives us. We need to know where our babies are going and that you love them and they work for you and yes, even that sometimes you can think of things that will make them work better or that they could also do.

In addition, we need to keep designing new things. This is a process we both love and it's been killing us to think of new ideas and just not be able to give them the time and energy they need to grow into fully realised products (see the log lifter story for the ultimate example of that!).

Also turns out that we need time to cook in our own oven and eat out in restaurants and at other people's places to see what's going on out there in the world. Time to think and read and draw and just BE.

Now in the business textbooks, you're meant to get that time by streamlining all your processes and standardising your output and removing yourself from working in the business, instead working ON it. Well stuff that! That's about the exact opposite of what we want. We want to be small and fluid and unique and involved.

SO, in order to do that, wholesale had to go and we've had to really define what we want to do and set some boundaries to make sure we can make that stuff happen.

Which is why I've added this section on tool sizing and selection. You see, in the past, constant reader, you would put in an order form or send an enquiry and then, over a series of emails, I would gently coax info about your oven size and configuration out of you and then suggest what tools and sizing I thought would suit you best.

This was a lovely process and it's the thirteen years we've been doing it that has given us the detailed oven and sizing knowledge we have, but it's also a bit crackers really because essentially, I'm asking the same questions over and over again individually when I could just ask it once, up front, right now, on the website, before you order.

That way, if you do have that info to hand, FANTASTIC! Most of our customers are passionate oven people buying for themselves coz they want the best and you guys have put a lot of research into your ovens and you know this stuff. Getting it off you straight up means we can write back to you immediately with sizing and shape suggestions and get your tools underway asap AND that time saving will mean that for the folks who DON'T have that info to hand or who have an unusual set up or aren't sure what exactly they're after, well we can still take the time to help them work out exactly what they need.

Now if you just read that and went into a panic because you don't know anything about the oven size or set up (for instance, if the tools are a present for someone else and/or the oven is not even built yet or not close by to get sizing from, etc), stop it! It's not a problem. As I've mentioned, we've been doing this for a long time now and we have several great strategies for coping with no size info AND also, whilst I don't mean to brag, ☺ our experience lets us work stuff out from the flimsiest of clues - like that if all you know is that the person is buying a kit oven or building their own, well I can deduce stuff from that OR maybe you just have a link to a Facebook picture with the oven out of focus in the background or something and I can size it by counting bricks. That's how good I am at this now. Seriously, I'm like the CSI of oven sizing!

Also, two other things should give you comfort:

Firstly, we'd NEVER leave you or the person you're buying for unhappy about your tools! If we got the sizing or whatever wrong, we'd always swap them out for you.

Secondly, we designed the babies to be easy to shorten, so if in any doubt, we always err on the side of caution and then I just make sure there's some spare brass screws and our little handle cutting guide in with the parcel when it goes and that way, if after a couple of uses, you (or whoever ends up wielding the tools) want to give them a haircut, it's easy peasy to do.

Ok, so I hope that helps you understand that asking for this info up front is not some tiresome join-you-up/customer-service-but-not-really nonsense (like those stoopid forms at the doctors for instance ☺), it's our way of making sure we get you the best tools we can, tools that perfectly fit your oven and your cooking needs.

READY TO TAKE THE OVEN INFO QUESTIONAIRE?
NO WRITING - Just reading and selecting options.