I recently fielded a question as to why we don’t sell our instruments with cases as other instrument sellers do, given our prices. The price of each instrument reflects the instrument being hand made, current cost of materials, and overhead. We don’t avoid cases casually, but rather in years past – as Sweetheart Flute and earlier when I was with Coopermans – we had offered a box as standard and for higher-end instruments, we offered a leather case. However, it was cliche that pretty much every order came with a request for customization of the cases, or no case at all for they had one with which they used with their corps or regiment. It became apparent that we were putting an added expense on the instruments for which the customer was not all that interested. We did find a fairly local maker for cases who offered somewhat affordable cases that we briefly included with our instrument, but these were rejected by our customers and the requests for customization resumed, so we dropped it. A great number of customers delighted in making their own cases, or already having one that we designed to hold more than a single fife, it was decided to stop including a case with the instrument, which shaved off the price a bit. Eventually, we offered a modest selection of cases but as a separate purchase. The cases we currently offer as a separate purchase are also hand-made by an outside source, and we do not offer a choice for customization. In most instrument sales that offer a case with the instrument, these are mass-produced in Asia to standard instruments and are therefore cheaply made and so cost-efficient to include with the instrument. There are no actual cases made for our instruments and therefore we would need to have them custom made, there are minimum orders and beyond our price point to afford having made for our style of instruments.
I hope that you will understand. This could be subject to change in the near future, but we do not currently have plans to do so.