New shop, new blog.

This is a brand new website. I used to work with WordPress and WooCommerce for my stores — and as nice looking as they were, they were also easy to hack, and the downtime became a real hindrance. So here we go, giving Shopify a try.

For you, the customer, what counts is security and quick response. Who likes to wait minutes for a webpage to load? That really became the main issue with our old web shops — they got so slow, often too slow to function.

They are still online if you want to check them out: for the USA it’s silent-sticks.com, for Germany and Europe custom-drums.de. Once all content has been transferred, those sites might be replaced entirely.

Until then — does anybody know how to create landing pages? Jeeez… I still have to learn.

When I’m not building web shops, I’m building drums. Since 2020 we also make Silent Sticks, which you might have heard of. By now (2026) more than 40,000 churches are using them. Sorry drummers… but that’s got to be better than the alternative (e-drums), right?

We grew a lot since then, but sadly we didn’t find a solution for making our sticks faster and more cost-efficient. So I had to let most of my employees go when drum sales dropped. And yes, drum sales have dropped globally — the smaller makers feel that first, as you already depend on just a handful of customers each month.

Now in February 2026 we finally finished our new Stick Tips, which made production two to three times faster — so we could finally start making some money. The development was expensive, so it feels like finally rolling into the goal after a long, long race, on the last drop of gasoline.

The response to our new sticks has been awesome, which really made us all happy. All we need now is a new store that doesn’t drive customers away.

Sadly all our reviews are gone now… unless someone knows how to get them transferred too…

Ok, that’s it for now — need to go!