Almost 45 years ago, Joe Stevens started SME with a different mission – to hand select exclusive lines and to meet a higher degree of quality. Now with the explosion of the information age, coupled with the proliferation of beautiful color packaging, that mission of providing the best for the consumer has become more difficult. This is exactly the intention of the marketers of most of the magic being produced today. Most of them make the packaging and ad copy look appealing because there is nothing inside. How many of you have products that you have purchased that did not even come close to measuring up to your expectations?
They strive to make the packaging and images appealing, even though the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” has been around long before the advent of cyber-space. Remember that with SME, you have a company committed to screening out many of those inferior items that end up collecting dust in your drawer or basement.
There are a number of dealers that want to carry everything and they say they are selective only because they want to purchase every new item, but they are financially unable to. We can’t help but be amused at such companies that claim they are selective, and yet seventy percent of the products on their “hot and new” lists are items that we cannot sell out of respect to you, our clients.
Nobody bats a thousand, but as our loyal clients tell us again and again, “I always have confidence when I purchase from Stevens Magic because you guys only carry the best.” Carrying the best has costs…it means sometimes that there are items that become available that other dealers post immediately, but we don’t because we want to preview that item first. In most cases, the odds are in our favor (just like in Vegas) that those new items should not go on our site at all.
We want you to know that it is a fact that SME was one of the original companies to adopt this approach of offering high-end, exclusive difficult-to-find items. We back that up with excellent customer service, years of product knowledge and information, and the ethics that go along with good business.
So, the next time that you see an item that looks great, and then find out that it’s not something we carry, there “might” be a very good reason (we’re a little tired of all the glitter and over blown video’s that feature empty content). We want our customer satisfaction rate to continue to be exceptionally high, and we will work hard to continue that trend.
