Why the Glass You Want Is Not Available
Stained Glass Express has always taken pride in never being out of stock on any glass. We would have at least one sheet cut up and out on the retail floor, ready for you to carry out, and another full sheet in the warehouse. As soon as the full sheet in the warehouse went to the retail floor, we ordered another one.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer that simple.
Since Spectrum (announced May 2016) and Uroboros (announced October 2016) closed, not only has some glass been scarce or not available at all, the dynamics of buying glass is different. Both companies’ assets were sold to Oceanside Glass and Tile.
Oceanside certainly has had its challenges. It moved the assets, constructed buildings and trained workers. As the distributors’ warehouses emptied their stock of Spectrum and Uroboros, we felt the need to find glass. It was a year from the time Spectrum announced its closing that we knew that Oceanside would begin production. In the meantime, this is what we did:
- We bought one year’s supply of cabinet glass in advance. We sell a lot of cabinet glass, most of it to one customer. We bought one year’s supply in advance, hoping the dust would settle by then and we would not be cutting and putting together hundreds of new sample sets for this customer. We called it right on that one. We made it through the year, and we are still using the same sample sets. Below is our top selling cabinet glass, Clear Seedy.
- We brought in two new lines of fusible glass. First, we brought in Wissmach’s 96 line. That meant rearranging some display area to make room for a new line of glass. We still had a lot of the old System 96, but as we ran out of some colors, we needed to be ready. Then we brought in Youghiogheny 96, later to become the Northeast distributor for Youghiogheny and increasing that line.
- We increased our offering of Bullseye compatible glass. We like to think of this as 90 COE, but Bullseye just calls it “Bullseye compatible.” We have had more customers switch over to Bullseye to avoid the turmoil. There is no question the glass is beautiful.