Introduction

[Duke]

hello everyone! my name is Aaron. I am a fellow crafter like yourselves, who happened to stumble upon this website about 3 weeks ago. at this very moment that I am sitting here typing this,I am sitting here in my hotel room in pendleton Oregon, at the leather craft trade show, which is being put on by ferdco machines. a brief note about myself, and I hope this doesnt scare any of you, I work for tandy leather factory, in the portland oregon store. we have a booth here at the trade show, and I hope I get a chance to meet a few of you face to face here this weekend. one reason that I am writing this intro here,is that I would like to pass a bit of news to all of you. im sure you all are familiar with barry king. anyways, I got a chance to have a couple of drinks with barry this evening, and he informed me that as of the first of the year, he is going to try to roll out a few new items.(this is where everyones ears perk up). he told me that hes going to be doing a few craftaid-like things with his sheridan style patterns. wow! I can hardly wait! also, he informed me that he has new geometric designs that he is working on,and hopes to have them out by the first.very cool. also he says he is working on doing more sizes on his various geometrics that he has out now. needless to say, I picked up a few of his tools, and will be getting more tomorrow. I read somewhere on this site that people had questions as to the best way to use his lifters. I asked him about this, and he told me that you dont have to pry on the tool at all, that you just have to drive it down and it slides. which is why it is smooth faced and not checkered. checkered would just grab the leather and hinder the tool from sliding. no prying needed. needless to say, im glad I came to pendleton. ive had a great time so far, and have met alot of customers face to face, after only talking to them on the phone for months. I am putting the word out about this website, and barry also informed me that he would be very interested in doing a "live chat" on this site, and would love to answer all of your questions. I gave him the web address and he promised me that he would at least check it out.(btw, he is younger than I would have thought he was.) as for tandy leather factory carrying his tools, keep waiting. I am told by a very authoritive figure of tandy that it "could" happen, but not for at least a few years. darn it! ok,im done with my novel, all ya'll feel free to boo me,or hiss at me, or whatever. im just a fellow leather crafter who is interested in bettering the craft. thank you.btw,s orry if I seem to ramble, like I said,I had a few drinks tonight.:D

[BruceGibson]

Welcome, Aaron!

[Guest]

Welcome Aaron,

I think you'll find that your aren't the only Tandy person here.

Dave Theobald

[Mike Phelps]

Welcome to the forum Aaron.

You'll definitely find a lot of diversity here.

Mike

[Regis]

Aaron,

Glad you found us. Is there ever a leather trade show in the south east? Guess we're too far from beautiful elk country :

Welcome.

Regis

[Don101]

Hi Aaron welcome to the site, Don

[Beaverslayer]

Welcome to this great forum Aaron, you will find everyone here very friendly and helpful.

Hope you don't wake up with a hangover, wondering what exactly you did last night.

Ken

[bustedlifter]

Welcome, I buy a lot of my supplies from Tandy except leather. Can you give some insight into what happened to the quality , other than it's imported? The leather I got there even 3-4 years ago was great but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.Thanks.

[Duke]

Welcome, I buy a lot of my supplies from Tandy except leather. Can you give some insight into what happened to the quality , other than it's imported? The leather I got there even 3-4 years ago was great but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.Thanks.

thanks everyone! good to feel welcome. as for a trade show in the SE, I know that there was one in texas a while back. as for any more, id have to ask around. no hangover this morning thank god, but its gonna be a long day. . as for the quality of the leather, I can tell you that since tandy is more geared towards the newby, and has to go by popular demand, that when the new guy looks at leather that costs 140.00 to 200.00 bucks a side(which we do still carry) they kind of choke. so in order to be cost effective, and still be able to have a stock on hand, tandys buyer has had to look around and find more suppliers that arent as expensive. unfortunately, there is a loss of a degree of quality. this is why we dont carry hermann oak. noone wants to spring for it. im sure some would, but when youre trying to buy for 100 stores, and only 3 or 4 have a market for it, it doesnt make it a cost effective thing. hope I answered your questions. these were the same Questions I had for the corperate guy thats here with me. and thats what he told me.

[bustedlifter]

Thanks for the quick response. I thought it would have something to do with corporate trying to keep costs down, nothing wrong with that. It would be nice if they would broker a deal to get some HO leather to sell to people willing to pay the price. The Tandy nearest to me is 90 miles away so to go there and hope they have some good leather isn't very practical, so I order the HO and get top quality everytime, although I have to wait for it. Other than that I think Tandy does an outstanding job!