A.W. Reed is Louisville Web Group's newest e-commerce client

AW Reed is a company that serves the American Quarterhorse industry, building the most amazing saddle blankets in the world. The great folks at AW Reed hired Louisville Web Group to build an e-commerce system through which people nationwide can purchase saddle blankets and pads online.

Founder Albert Wilmore Reed (1863-1927) came from a long line of highly skilled craftsmen. Starting with A.W.’s Great-Grandfather, Isaac Reed, who served in the Pennsylvania Militia during the Revolutionary War, there has been a succession of carpenters, stone masons, furniture makers, harness and saddle makers. A. W. Reed’s Harness Store was located in Williamsburg, Ohio, a small town in southern Ohio. Because of A. W.’s skill with leather, customers came from all over the Midwest to the little shop on Main Street.
tle shop on Main Street.
A. W. always believed that any product that carried the Reed Family name had to be made with the best material and the utmost care. Equally important, every handcrafted A. W. Reed product was designed with the comfort of both horse and rider in mind. Old A. W. would have been very pleased with the decision of his descendants to represent the best brands in the industry and manufacture Cutter Collection saddle pads, a product that stands alone in a very crowded field.
Cutter Collection also has a history. Judy White, one of the founders of the company, had been working with high-quality Merino wool for a number of years manufacturing pet products which incorporated wool. The benefits of wool for puppies and kittens was proven. Sometime in the mid 1980’s, while attending the North American International Livestock Exhibition in Louisville, Kentucky, Judy decided it was time to try and marry wool fleece to saddle blankets. Horses, after all, had problems with sore withers, and with wool’s excellent track record in hospitals and nursing homes, the use of wool fleece was worth a try.
The rest is history. Cutter Collection was started in 1988 (Marietta, Oklahoma) and was one of the first, if not the first, companies to manufacture a saddle pad consisting of a New Zealand wool blanket and Merino wool fleece. At first, sales were limited to horse and stock shows but as more trainers and horsemen learned of the quality and benefits of a Cutter Collection saddle pad, the business grew.
Bob and Pam Reed purchased the company July 1, 2004. Today, manufacturing and distribution are located in Sulphur, Oklahoma and corporate offices are in Columbia, Kentucky. Since purchasing the company, the Family has focused on maintaining and, in some cases, improving the quality of materials that are used to make a Cutter Collection saddle pad. There have also been improvements, thanks to the recommendation of well-known horsemen such as David Field of Kemp, Texas. Still, despite all the changes, the core design remains the same.

Louisville Web Group is proud to be the e-commerce partner of A.W. Reed and we look forward to helping them do great things online!

Louisville Web Group has announced the signing of its newest e-commerce web development client, Louisville Bedding Company.

Louisville Bedding Company is the World’s largest producer of mattress pads and produces exceptional, high quality bedding products. Since 1889, Louisville Bedding Company has grown and expanded to more than one million square feet of manufacturing space worldwide to continue its strong presence as a National and International source for quality home textiles including mattress pads and mattress protectors, fiberbeds, featherbeds, latex foam, polyurethane foam, comforters, sheets, and bed pillows. With 8 manufacturing and distribution points across the U.S., Canada and China, we have the capacity to produce an excess of 18 million mattress pads and 14 million bed pillows a year!

Louisville Web Group is one of America’s leading e-commerce web development companies serving clients worldwide with custom e-commerce solutions and innovative web design.

For more information, contact Louisville Web Group at 502-241-2642.

If you’re like me, you’re always concerned with the bottom line on any e-commerce or development project. My clients know that I work diligently to keep their projects on or under budget and I’m also keenly aware of my own bottom line.

I’ve had some interesting experiences with development personnel. My first major web development project was all done in an old version of .asp. It was a large project so I had to make a long-term commitment to an .asp developer in order to see the project through for my client.
But after the project was finished, we got kinda attached to this developer – he was a very likeable fellow – and we kept him on assuming we’d get more .asp projects. But nope. Didn’t happen. This developer could work in .Net platform, but we didn’t sniff out any .Net projects either. Eventually we had to let him go and we still miss him to this day.

Eventually we picked up another large development project, this one in .php. I already had a .php developer that I’d used on a part time basis for little projects here and there, but in order to meet the client’s requirements, I had to bring this person in full-time as well. But after we got this project finished, not another development project came up and none appeared to be on the horizon. All we saw for months were static sites. So I had to let my .php developer go as well and, yes, we also got close to him and we still miss his cheery disposition.

So the next time I got a development project, I tried outsourcing it to an Indian company. Dude. I got burned sooooo bad. Came within an eyelash of losing my client and the whole affair cost me more than a few gray hairs. And I’m such a trusting soul that I tried it again with another Indian company a few months later and got burned again.

Granted, I’ve only had two experiences with Indian companies, but in both cases, the communications gap was w-i-d-e and it grew wider as they seemed to tire of my projects. And once they lay down a line of code, they do not like to change it. Even if it’s totally wrong, they won’t change it. You can write your instructions, or any of the documentation you provide, quite succinctly, but doesn’t matter. The simplest words and the simplest instructions will be misinterpreted. Jot it down.

And if you make the mistake of paying them anything before the job is tested and completed, I can assure you that your project is done. Done. Even if it isn’t finished, it’s done. They won’t look at it again. Don’t know why, but that’s the way it has been in my experience. I did figure that one out, though, and the second time I paid them nothing until I was certain they couldn’t finish what they started and so I paid them a percentage of what we agreed upon just so they’d go away.

So here we are today. I’m getting a lot of work and it’s in my favorite area – e-commerce. I don’t take .asp work and I don’t take .Net work unless the client doesn’t mind letting us convert it to .php. We’re good at .php and that’s where we’re staying. And there’ll be no more Indian companies for us. We do everything in-house. It’s the only way to go.

- Gary Rawlings