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How to Order From Dogwood Ceramic Supply
To place an order with Dogwood Ceramic Supply, just pickup the telephone and give us a call during our standard business hours:
Showroom Business Hours:
Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday 10AM to 5PM
Thursday 1PM to 6PM
Closed Wednesday and Sunday
And always remember to have your MasterCard or Visa ready as Dogwood Ceramic Supply does not accept American Express (nor Discover either).
Dogwoodceramics.com is not an ecommerce business*. We have
a real store, staffed by knowledgeable people, open 5 days per week for your shopping convenience.
The store staff will be happy to accept your telephone or fax order and for customers who are not in the immediate area Dogwood Ceramic Supply
ships our extensive selection of products via UPS and YRC (Yellow-Roadway Corp) Freight company on a daily basis.
All orders placed by telephone are processed by hand using simple product identification names or numbers. Our ordering process is
not perfect, and most definitely not speedy, but by having a real live person (more importantly a knowledgeable person) taking the order we are able to catch
far more customer errors that any other order processing system. Also, because a live person is handling the order
any unusual customer requests, such as
holding a shipment to a specific date or special billing instructions, are more easily handled.
Even with simplest purchases there are often potential pitfalls, such as purchasing high
fire glazes for use with low fire clay. Because customer support and service is
critical to the needs of all customers, Dogwood Ceramic Supply strongly recommends face to face or voice to voice transactions during our standard
business hours to minimize errors and best support the customer. For especially long orders we strongly suggest sending a fax to our dedicated fax machine.
Purchase Orders
Dogwood Ceramic Supply accepts purchase orders from schools, colleges and governmental agencies. Please provide all shipping, contact and billing information on the purchase order. If there are special delivery considerations please clearly indicate those issues on the purchase order. In general it is better to provide a "do not provide prior to date" than a "must need by date" especially in consideration of deliveries prior to the start of school season when staff may not be readily available to handle freight shipments.
School & Governmental Purchase Orders
Program issued VISA-MasterCard credit cards are accepted for any size purchase order.
Purchase Orders with payment by credit card at the time of shipment is the preferred purchase method.
Purchase Orders that require delayed payment are accepted under the following terms:
1) Absolute minimum purchase order is $125.00 unless prior approval is obtained.
2) Preferred payment terms are Net 10 Days.
3) Prior management approval is required for any payment term over 14 days.
4) Payments terms of 31 or more days are subject to an administrative fee of not less than 3% of the net invoice amount.
Dogwood Ceramic Supply requires a written copy Purchase Orders.
Purchase Orders should include billing and shipping addresses, itemized shipping charges or authorization for shipping
charges to be prepaid and added to the invoice, and payment terms.
Commercial Purchase Orders
Dogwood Ceramic Supply does not accept open account purchase orders from commercial customers without prior management approval. To simplify the transaction payment should be made by VISA-MasterCard or by advance payment by check.
Ecommerce Business
(not)
*ecommerce businesses, also known as electronic or internet businesses, commonly feature electronic shopping carts which are ideal for high
volume products that are readily identifiable by consumers, have few if any options and are virtually fool-proof to purchase.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon one's perspective), the wide variety of products sold by Dogwood Ceramic Supply do not lend themselves to
ecommerce transactions as the products are either sold in relatively low volumes, difficult for consumers to readily distinguish from similar products, have significant
or complex options or can be easily confused with seemingly identical products. For example, Dogwood Ceramic Supply provides custom Paragon Kilns to industrial customers,
universities and specialized artists. In our experience, even the most basic custom kiln design can require 1-3 hours of telephone or face to fact contact and the more
complex kilns can require days or even weeks of time as the engineers (and even the local electric supply company) become involved in the project. Most
ecommerce businesses will avoid anything so intense that a single telephone call is required, much less any product which requires a telephone call taking more than
60 seconds. Obviously the Custom Kilns not only require an intensive level of customer support, but the sheer number of potential features and specifications makes the
ecommerce system impossible to implement for just a single unit to be sold much less the hundreds of different custom kiln designs made each year. Yet, in spite of the
intensive efforts required, Dogwood Ceramic Supply loves providing custom kilns. We have been active in the design process of many of the catalog standard kilns
for the past 20 years, enjoy the process and can apply our knowledge to benefit customers. Win-win for everybody.
Passing knowledge to the customer is important and can prevent customers making serious mistakes. From our standpoint, buying the wrong
product is a serious mistake. At the bare minimum, buying the incorrect product is disruptive to the customer's timely completion of their projects. In the
most extreme instances, the health or safety of the consumer can be compromised. If Dogwood Ceramic Supply can take a few seconds and clarify the customer's purchase we can
prevent many, many mistakes. It is not that we don't trust our customers or that they don't know what they are doing, but in 20+ years of experience we have seen
way too many husbands (wives, sisters, employees, co-workers, purchasing clerks etc) purchasing a Cone 6 glaze
for use on low fire clay because he (she) thought the glaze color was pretty.
Dogwood Ceramic Supply will continue doing what we have done
since the day we opened the business.... supporting customers the best we can. Let us know when the ecommerce technology becomes advance enough to correct your
purchase of Cone 6 glazes with low fire clay before the incorrect product ships
to you.
How to Order
aka: Names of the Products
The goal of every business should be to simplify the ordering process for the typical (final) customer.
With that goal in mind, Dogwood Ceramic Supply uses the most basic product identification system for customer orders.... if at all possible we will just use the product name.
Take the simple Plastic Ceramic Christmas Tree Bulb. Big name.
Hard to remember for some people. Can be mutilated into something beyond comprehension. But the individual products are named "Medium Twist". Or "Small Twist". Give us the simple product name
(i.e. Medium Twist), tell us the color (assorted, red, blue etc) and move on to the next product. Simple system.
But for some products, no matter how hard we try to simplify the naming of the product, there will always be somebody who must have
an "item number". Mackie's Ceramic Slip is a classic example of this issue. Mackie's makes 1 primary
product... White Ceramic Slip. Mackie's also make a Terra Cotta Slip but the sales of that product are a very small percentage of the primary product and we
haven't carried the Terra Cotta Slip in our showroom for most of the past decade. For years we named Mackie's Slip simply as Mackie's Slip. We would even
accept the name "slip" if the customer couldn't remember the brand name. Then one day, some smart aleck ordering clerk refused to order the product for
her recreation program unless we provided an "item number" for the product for use in her data entry system. We still have no clue why a simple
four letter word (slip) could not have been used. We could have been especially cruel and gave her an excellent "item number", something along the lines of
123ryip7qk and let her stumble around with that for the rest of her career. No, instead, we remembered of goal of keeping the system easy for the customer and identified the product simply as M-1 (Mackie's number 1 product).
Simple, Simple, Simple.
Manufacturers (for the most part) follow our logic and will keep things simple. For most part. But naming of some products becomes
difficult.... especially for some color products. Take BLACK glaze for example:
Spectrum has a Cone 6 black glaze in their 1500 Series. Spectrum also has two black glazes in their
1100 Series... one of those is a gloss glaze while the other is a satin glaze. Three different Cone 6 glazes sharing the "Black" name from one manufacturer.
Yuk! Think that is bad? Duncan has
two glazes in their Envision Series
sharing the name "Black" and both glazes are opaque gloss glazes. Duncan also has
two glazes in their Envision Series sharing the "Sun Yellow" name. And you thought Spectrum
was the bad company.
At some point we must use something other than the product name or color name to identify the products. Logically the only possible
(simple) solution is to use the Product ID number. IN 1003 versus IN 1670. Both are Sun Yellow glazes in the Duncan Envision product line. The ID number tells us the glazes are different and positively
identifies the glaze to both Dogwood and the customer for ease of ordering.
But we don't always follow the manufacturer's product identification numbering system because sometimes the manufacturer's product
identification number is horribly complicated. 2565111GDE is a specific Paragon Kiln that is
featured in the Dogwood Ceramic Supply Showroom and on our website. In the real world the 2565111GDE refers to the
Paragon TnF 27-3. The
first two digits (25) refer to the basic size configuration of the kiln while the rest of the alphabet soup refers to the electrical specification, standard equipment and
optional features loaded on the kiln. Oh yea, like we are going to make the customer remember 2565111GDE if they want to order a Paragon TnF 27-3 Kiln. One
mistake in that complex number and the customer in California is receiving a kiln meeting the electrical specifications of Costa Rica. Reverse two digits and the lid might be installed backwards.
Bottom line, use the simple product name if the simple product name is the only identifier provided Remember, we are trying to keep it simple. For a complex product, or a
product that might share a name in common with other products, such as the IN 1003 Sun Yellow previously mentioned,
then use the
product ID number instead of the product name. Oh, and if you are smart enough to remember Mackie's Slip is Mackie's Slip than you
don't have to use the M-1 product ID to identify the product.
ceramic fiber top for glass kilns
12590 Dedeaux Road
Gulfport Mississippi, 39503
Telephone (228) 831-4848 Fax (228)
831-3111
Showroom Business Hours:
Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday 10AM to 5PM
Thursday 1PM to 6PM
Closed Wednesday and Sunday
Ready to place an order? Then just pickup the telephone and give Dogwood Ceramic Supply a call during our standard business hours.