corter

I snapped a weld on mine after about 3 months of use. They replaced it, so hoping it was just a bad weld

The problem with the two saying "quality goods" is that when scaled way down to the size of a leather stamp, they'll be unreadable. Also the spacing is off on the relationship between "Maggie" and the rest of the text. If you're going to use "quality goods", put it in a much more simple font. something san serif that will read when it's printed at a 4 point size, because that's about what it'll be at once you stamp it into leather. Edit- just realized it's "Magpie", not "Maggie". So there's another issue, that font doesn't read for your brand name.

Britkk- I sand my edges, then use an edger to round them. Then I burnish with gum trag and after that I dye them if the plan calls for it. once they're burnished, it's easier to keep the dye in place. However it's also a lot of practice.

Courtney- that's the way I work for custom work most of the time. I use guides on my cutting board to get square pieces, then cut all shapes freehand. These are samples for manufacturing (which I will not do myself) so I made a pattern on the computer, printed it out on card stock, and transferred it to leather with a scratch awl. All the cutting is without any guides, I just follow the lines I trace. Monica- I use a ruler for drawing, but I do not use one for cutting. All free hand.

Would you blame a landlord if you rented a retail shop and got no customers? This is essentially what you are doing by dumping Go Daddy. Folks seem to think that since they're making an online business, the details of a regular business do not apply. They think there's a magic button or html code you get and boom... sales. Sure, there are some little tricks to SEO and your website name that may result in a few extra hits to start, but their results will pale in comparison to the results you'll get from actually building your brand. Unfortunately most people have it backwards. The "easy way" to making sales is not using SEO to get on top of Google searches, or meta-tagging things. The easy way is creating a unique product, something that is better/faster/cheaper than anything else or fills a void in a market. The HARD way is using SEO, because we are not SEO experts- we are leather smiths. We want to be making things, we don't want to be internet marketers. You do need to tell people about your product, but it is not the web host's responsibility just as it is not the landlord's responsibility to buy billboards to advertise his/her tenants. My suggestion is to find online communities that may benefit from what you make and integrate yourself via social media- forums and message boards. You can buy advertising space, or you can learn what blogs are most relevant and talk to those bloggers about collaborating through posts and reviews.

Thanks! I have W&C split it to 5oz, then split it beyond that with a Landis. The only tip I can give for cutting is practice as much as possible. I don't use guides or anything, even the straight cuts are freehand. I used to buy the cheapest leather I could find and cut shapes and straight lines for hours on end, so I guess it's just putting in the hours to learn and develop the muscle memory. I also use a #2 exacto instead of a big leather working knife.

I've been working on sampling products for a new brand I'm designing for. These are all hand cut/sewn with W&C Harness/English bridle, and the final products will be machine sewn

Thanks! Thoroughbred Leather sells it

I believe that's machine sewn? Looks good! Dublin will stretch, so you're going to want to stitch across the top opening to prevent the wallet from loosing shape over time. In my experience it will burnish fairly well, I just use gum trag and a wood slicker followed by some bees wax- it should take a darker edge.

Yep, from Horween. I usually buy a couple hundred sq. ft. at a time, if you want less I think they have a website called tannery row for single hide purchases. That being said, I've stopped using them as much because of the issue you have. It sometimes takes me 2-3 months of persistence to get through to my rep and another month or 2 for an order to get shipped. Andrew- I do a light hand burnishing with gum trag, they'll burnish naturally beyond that as the wallet gets used.

I just let my rep know I was going to be in town and he invited me, he took me around the whole tannery. It was super fun, Horween is interesting because it's basically been added on ton a bunch of times over the years and is a real maze of floors and stuff. Plus, getting to see how shell cordovan is made was really quite amazing

Thanks all! LTC- I believe Maverick Leather has some in stock Thanks for the crit 50 years, the edges are burnished and coated on these wallets. Regarding the wrap stitch, I'd have to disagree with you on that one. I use a 4 cord waxed poly thread, and the wrap over stitch lets the bill slot keeps it's shape over time. I've never had a report of a broken stitch and I've been doing that wrap stitch for 7 years now. With a linen thread or machine-weight poly I'd agree with you though!

Hey guys and gals! Here are a few new wallets I've made recently. I've been experimenting with some non-traditional leathers. The first is a camo printed veg tan. The camo print is a film that's applied on grade A veg, so it's pretty normal to work with. The next is pretty standard, Horween football print. This leather is crazy because it gets grippier as it gets warmer (they use this stuff in the NFL, just with tiny logos printed in it). We were at the tannery watching them make it, pretty wild! This is some latigo that I had custom made in an indigo color. I do some indigo dying, and they were able to get the color a perfect hue of blue/green that looks exactly like freshly oxidized indigo. The last isn't experimental, it's just Horween's #8 Chromexcel paired with Wickett & Craig Russet Harness. This is probably my current favorite combo, especially with the front pocket detail I've started incorporating.

Get your tax ID number (it's free and you can do it online) and use Weaver Leather. You'll save boatloads over using Zack White's retail costs.

I think you need to do a few things that would help a lot. First- Website. Your website is extremely text heavy, which doesn't sell product. Since people aren't going to get to pick up your product when they're shopping online you need to give them plenty of big, clean images. This will also draw them in and keep their attention. Also, clean up your navigation. Right now there are a lot of links at the top that do not relate to one another. Try using links like "Products", "About", and "Customer Gallery". Then branch off from there. Ditch the traffic counter, ditch the black background, and ditch the fancy fonts. You want your product to stand out on your website, because that's the only reason for your website. If the product has to fight with other elements to get the viewer's attention, it's not going to work well. Second- Advertising. I can't stress enough that for your product, AdWords will do next to nothing. I'd recommend that you search out online forums in your niche, see what they're looking for, and work your way in to the communities. Read through the pages, and you'll know exactly what they want and exactly what they can pay for it. For example, you may read "wow, I really wish someone made a $60 black holster for XX gun." This is an in- being a small operation, you can have that product made in a day or two, and be the first to offer it. Even if you only make one to test the market, sooner or later you'll hit on something. The power of forums and online communities is amazing, and you can have a lot of success supplying just one of them if you find the right one. It's much easier to sell a product that people need than to first convince people they want it before they buy it. Third- read a few business books. I always recommend The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It's a lot about internet marketing and 100% online business, but you can easily adapt the theories to selling a physical product online (that's what I did). Fourth- pricing. Find a specific niche, be it working men, enthusiasts, law enforcement, whatever, and cater to them. Design your website specifically to them, make products they need, and figure out what they are comfortable paying for the products. Big pricing variances in leather goods are usually due simply to what crowd the company caters to, that's the reason some veg tan belts sell for $30 and some sell for $200. Same leather, different brand identity. Of course you'll always want pricing to be materials plus 10% plus your time, whatever that may be. Working from there, you can adjust up if you want, or maybe down a tiny bit to out price a competitor and sell twice as much, making it very worth your while.

I saw in your other post you've already got a blog up with pricing, etc. My biggest piece of advice would be to take time to learn the craft, don't even think about selling anything you make for half a year. Make anything and everything you can, take some time to develop a style and create unique things. You want to be able to offer the highest quality work you can, and it seems like you're more focused on materials than craft right now. Re: this card holder, good for a first attempt. I'd suggest to just get a simple groover, overstitch wheel, and awl, and make as many pieces as you can out of junk leather to learn craft before focusing on the selling aspect. Then you can get into the fancy tools, the high quality veg tan and the different types of cording once you've got your skills down.

I second cutting your own, but I'd suggest the simple wooden draw gauge from Tandy Leather to start. You'll get the feel of using the tool, and decide whether you want to do it yourself or outsource. I've had mine 6 or 7 years, usually do 800-1000 belts a year, and that little $12 tool has seen me through all of them. Just get a pack of blades with it. Your other option is outsourcing the cutting so you can still choose your materials. I've got a good friend who makes bags, and has a fabric cutting place cut her straps. $1 per cut, stacking 3-4 hides, and you're paying a really good price and saving a lot of time while being able to choose your widths. Re: leather weight, it depends. Your main issue is stretching. You can use any weight if you stitch it with strong thread, as the stitching will prevent stretch. However, without stitching I'd stick to at least 6-7oz leather, I use 8-9 on my waxed cotton duck totes. Glendon: where are you in Boston? My shop's in Allston!

Thanks dude! I started right here, on the pages of this forum. Learned everything from reading, then did it myself. I started selling my stuff on another forum relating to Japanese fashion- Japanese stores didn't sell to the US yet, so I made similar stuff and sold it here to kids my age (in college at the time). It kind of grew from there. The only advice I can give you is to admire other people's work, but only copy the work ethic. Be original in your design. Study the market, find holes, then fill them. It's much easier selling a product that no one else makes than convincing someone to buy your version of a product lots of people make. And it's nearly impossible to scale a handmade leather goods company- it took me 5 years, and I'm barely able to produce what I need to. Two needle, no stitching pony, no clue what it's called. I've pretty much been at this 50 hours a week for the past 5 years, so I sew without looking these days and it goes pretty fast. The prepunched you see on the blog is the new production method, I have cutting dies made now because my hands started giving me troubles (at 25....ugh!) and I didn't want to machine sew for obvious reasons. However, when I was hand cutting everything, I memorized my shapes and did not use templates- they waste time. Learn how to cut a straight line without a ruler, learn how to cut a curve without a template or tracing, and you'll fly through work. I just use a 4 prong diamond fork from Tandy to punch, and I was at 25-30 pieces a day before I switched to die cuts. Now, needless to say, it's higher than that. Thanks man! I'm fortunate enough to like simple stuff I think, it took me 5 years to even design a proper logo for the brand It is true though, you hit a much broader market without floral patterns in everything. Though I do like traditional leatherwork a whole bunch!

Thanks! www.corterleather.com, new website launching Thursday 3/21. Instagram's @corterleather if you're into that. Thanks dude. A lot of it was that I stopped making what other people wanted and started making what I wanted, putting together a cohesive collection. It's going to get super fun later this year, doing lots of new stuff. Burnishing Chromexcel sucks, no way around it- I use a combo of dye/neatsfoot/wax and do it by hand. Plain old Elmers white glue.

Shoebox method here. One for invoices, one for receipts. When tax time comes I just count up the invoices, count up the receipts, send those two numbers to my cpa. I have my tax ID for suppliers, and that's it. The IRS is really only interested in businesses that loose money year after year, if you're claiming any sort of profit it shouldn't really raise up any red flags.

That's what I'm saying though. If the font was not readable, it means it wasn't attached to the file and they didn't have it on their machine. When you say "just pick a similar font", that means they have to go in and set that type, space it correctly... it's not just point and click. So that's what the extra charge was for. Just have your daughter convert the font to an object next time, that problem will be solved.

Last time I was there I heard Cordovan was super sold out, like nothing available until June 2013. Plus they haven't been producing anything but black and #8 since late summer of '12.

I've ordered tons from Infinity and never had one issue, always great with response time. I'm confused though, if they charged your card that means you ok'd the proof, no? They always have me ok a proof in writing before anything is charged. It's very helpful to do your own proofing and design work if you'd like to save time and money, as that's hard to convey in writing for ANY profession. When you have someone doing a half hour or an hour of digital work to change a font and space it correctly so it will read, or prepare the file for production, $40-100 really isn't much of a fee compared to things like graphic design and CAD for casting hardware. I'd bet that it takes more time than the production of the stamp itself, and I'd pay that price any day for a professional with experience to make sure that my brand name reads clear on my work for the life of the brand.

Thanks! That's a pretty good story. I got an email about a rush job over the summer, I think it was 25 of each color of those notebook covers in 3 days. I said yea, I can get that done for you with a 25% rush fee, BUT I can waive the fee if you pay cash when you pick them up So the person says a credit card is cool, the job gets finalized, and then they asked if they could give me a call. I said yea sure, thinking I was about to walk right into one of those micro-managing-customer situations because there was literally nothing else to talk about, it was a pretty simple job. I pick up and the girl on the phone goes "Yea, I just wanted to let you know that I'm Mitt Romney's personal aid. We need these covers branded with his signature, because he's giving them out as gifts on his Olympic tour of Europe in July." My jaw about dropped to the floor! I'm in Boston, he lives here, and his aid is only a couple years older than me & saw my stuff somewhere online. She wanted to give gifts that were made in the USA and would be useful instead of engraved paperweights they usually give. So basically he put some Field Notes notebooks in my notebook sleeves and gave them to foreign presidents and leaders. I know the President of Poland and Israeli Prime Minister got one, some Olympic committee folks, but at the time the details of his trip were classified and they couldn't tell me. Then when he got back he went into full time campaign mode, so I never found out exactly who got them. I never got to meet him, but his personal aid did come over a few times and she was pretty cool. My best friend's fiancé worked the Scott Brown campaign so we knew some of the same people. And she had her secret service identifier pin on once, which was super awesome to see.

Depends. Between 2 and 5 for wallets/pockets, usually around 6 or 7 for bags.