How much to charge for your leather goods?

[ToddW]

Not really agreeing or disagreeing.. the market usually corrects this as they can't live without repeat buyers and reputation..  the average person might love this as comparing to.. lets say an Amazon belt from china.. Walmart, or Jos A Banks..  Buying from someone like that site usually means a shopper wants something nicer or different than can get at the store..  The feedback and reviews from users seem to say their customers are quite happy with the quality and product..

https://effortlessgent.com/tanner-goods-review/

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B084KLVNMF

https://www.yelp.com/biz/tanner-goods-portland-2

https://www.allthewallets.com/tanner-goods-utility-bifold-review/

 

 

 

[SUP]

 Two things:

Reviews are always to be taken with a pinch of salt. Myriad ways to fake them.

Secondly, about people liking these goods - when they have no idea what good quality is, how will they know they are getting substandard quality? That they like these goods itself shows they are completely clueless.

No one here commented on the quality of the leather; it is the workmanship that is shoddy. and there is no denying that. Poorly made edges for example, will remain so - being stitched, they might not come apart for a few years but will continue to appear shoddy, to those in the know. Large stitching holes that remain obviously open will gather dirt, but then, the user will probably think it is natural 'aging' of the leather. 

There is no getting around the fact that the items are poorly made. The approval of an ignorant public is just fooling them, don't you think?  That they continue to fool people in no way means they sell quality products; it just means they have lucked onto a product that people know very little about and can get by with a minimum of effort and poor quality.

Edited June 8, 2023 by SUP

[ToddW]

I went back and re-read my post and just wanted to say I am not trying to argue.. I am really not..  I hand sew.. machine sew, hand cut, die cut.. I love doing it.. I will say that I could not personally scale that as my old hands hurt to much and I care to much about the stuff I build myself.. With that said, I actually have had a designer design me a backpack... it had quality standards defined..Leather defined.. hardware defined.. I had one made here in the USA, Had one made overseas.. and had one made in Mexico.. This has been a long running and expensive project for me...as a side note, Leon Mexico has a ton of manufacturers that are VERY good.. look at the known shoes and boots made there..  After I had my samples, I took them around for focus groups to pick my manufacturer.. I took it to leather artisans (multiple generation ones).. I took it to older... younger.. high income.. low income. All three bags were exact same design.. All three were made in different countries.. All three had different costs.. This is all in cost.. shipping, leather, labor, hardware, etc..  The surprising thing is people could not tell where it was made... The leather artisans all said the quality was GREAT.. They could not tell any quality difference..  and only picked based on the actual color and sheen of the leather.  All were VERY similar.  As you probably know, cow leather is considered a no go in certain asian countries so its water buffalo.. all the tanneries  in the  all three different country have different methods of tanning... As an example Lefarc in Mexico is said to be green where most Asian countries aren't... After this blind taste test I ran, I then went to the "how much would you pay"..  MOST if not all said they would only pay a maximum of $299 for the backpack.. Well.. A backpack has a ton of labor and material and that price pretty much pushes it out of the US if you want to sell at that price and have any margin..

[ToddW]

Also I am talking around the point of bad quality or unfinished.. what ever it is..  I really think its in the eye of the beholder what people like and don't... if it is poor quality.. it comes apart.. I bevel my edges, skive the sewed side.. burnish the edges..  thats just me..  my stitching lines are straight...  the comments about Tanner Goods are your opinions.. mine is.. "it is what it is". "If they can sell it at that price and that finish level.. more power to them.. I commend them for making it in the US (if they really do).. Its an honorable thing..

my last thought on this.. Walmart would not sell as much as they do if people shopping there care that much about quality.  I have sold to walmart.. Its brutal.. would not recommend it to ANYONE... you can have 2 similar products.. a good one and a better one... they will chose the cheaper one every time.  that is why their stuff moved from "Made in the USA" to cheap...they are the largest retailer in the world....  I personally like supporting the small guy.. I buy on kickstart..I buy from people I like..  I often shop on price but I do feel good about buying something nice as well..  There are people that buy at ever price level..

Edited June 8, 2023 by ToddW

[Handstitched]

8 hours ago, dikman said:

The price of the belts made my jaw drop! $175 for a plain belt, no stitching/decoration, raw edges simple buckle - and that's $US!!!

We all know our own markets, but if I charged that much for a plain  belt, I wouldn't sell a damn thing   The line " tell him he's dreamin' " springs to mind. The prices are OTT . 

HS 

[Klara]

I don't see a problem with the belts, apart from the price (assuming the leather is good quality). They are simply made, but imho not badly made. Incidentally, they look very much like the belts made by an ex-colleague of mine who has been selling thousands of them over the last twenty or so years. But he sells from market stalls (much less overhead) for about Euro 40 per belt... His belts wear well and keep the pants up. Not everybody needs stitching or decoration and the edges mostly polish themselves during use...

So, I would never pay tannergood's prices, but I see no reason to bash them, either.

Btw, creating and maintaining a good-looking, modern website is a lot of work. Work that needs to be paid for. 

 

 

[fredk]

Something I find I have always to remind people; what the seller is asking for is different to what they get. How many items has this dealer sold at their prices?

And as we have discovered, feedback left is no true indicator

I have a friend who uses ebay to price the model kits he wants to sell. Its usually ' someone is selling this one for £70 so I'll price mine at £65.' BUT if you go on ebay, on a list on the left you can find things that have sold, sales completed. In that model kit scenario when we looked, the average price for his kit which had sold was under £20

[SUP]

@Klara, I agree about belts. Simple belts are as nice as elaborate ones. But the prices are a bit much on that site, don't you think?

Websites can be created and maintained without much expense. See, WordPress and AEM are two of several  Content Management Systems which people can use to build and maintain their own dynamic websites, including payment processing,   that takes away the need for IT departments or consultants to maintain content on a website. It is a simple process where one is guided every step of the way. It can all be set up at a very reasonable cost, less than $500.00, and the only thing to maintain is the license. And these websites can be viewed on any browser, any operating system, and on any screen size. In fact, many websites that we see online are built using WordPress. If you look at the bottom of the screen, that appears in small print.

And @ToddW, I completely agree. Mexico and other countries do produce good quality leatherwork as well as not such good work. That happens everywhere. Unfortunately, the not-so-good work is cheaper and sells the most. In the process, people have little chance of knowing what good quality is. Another drawback is that those countries get a reputation of producing substandard work, which is sad for the leatherworkers there who do produce good quality work.

The other issue is, leatherwork has very low bars for entering the field. So any and everyone thinks they can get in and get by with producing the type of work we see out there, selling on the cheap.  So good quality leatherwork gets pushed to the side more and more. 

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by SUP

[chuck123wapati]

I do agree i feel they are over priced too i sell a strap belt for about 35 bucks with a simple roller buckle but.....

We live in a world of buyer beware.

do buyers have to be aware?

Or is there someone who has to be aware for the buyer?

People stand in line in our store to buy water from a machine that is tied to the very same water source as the house they live in! the only difference is a filter they could buy for 20 bucks, but instead they buy 5 gallon plastic bottles, waste gasoline and wait in line. The store knows its the same water only filtered. The store also sells filters. 

profit margin and profit? Sell a few things at a high margin to get to your desired profit margin or sell a shit ton of cheap things at a lower profit to realize the same profit. Both are acceptable methods of making money in any business class in the world. Another viable and well used business concept, figure your overhead and tack on the profit you would like to see then add  say 20% more. If you sell like hot cakes raise your prices until sales fall off if you don't, lower your prices until sales pick up, quality has nothing to do with it. 

There are business classes in college but there are no consumer classes in college. Why? because businesses fund colleges, consumers fund businesses.

In answer to your question friend. Forget what everyone else charges it makes no difference to the world, charge what you want to, the consumer will decide if they want to pay you that's how business is taught and that's how business works.

 

 

[Tugadude]

14 hours ago, GrampaJoel said:

I am just seeking some answers.

This is going to be wordy so if that isn't your thing, feel free to click away.  I just want to give some examples and share what I've learned from decades in business.  Not in leather, in construction chemicals, but I think there's a lot of similarity.

Marketing is a complicated thing.  The recent hiccups that major brands are having are an example.  I looked at the website and I agree that it is a very professional, well executed domain.  

I also read the "about us" section which is at the bottom of the page.  The company appears to be legitimate and located in the US and at least one of the products I clicked on did say US made, so I'll take that as being accurate.  

I think I talked about branding in another thread on this subject, but don't have time to look it up.  

Many here are into leatherworking but they have never been in business, at least not the sort where you are captain of your own ship.  And probably very few have studied business and what it means to be profitable.

Sales has been my career for nearly 40 years now.  During that time I've worked for distributors and manufacturers and have seen the sales process from both sides.  The two are similar but can be very different.  For one thing, margins are much higher at the manufacturing level in my business.  That isn't always the case, but it is often the case.  The reason is the huge overhead that manufacturers have invested in  producing their goods.  I could list them, but you probably already are aware of most of them.

I once had a customer's customer out to breakfast.  He was a contractor who bought from one of my distributors, and my distributor wanted me to help him address pricing concerns.  The contractor wanted to know why my product "was so high".  In reality it really wasn't that much different from comparable brands, and some of the difference was in the markup at the distributor level.  Still, the distributor felt that I might be able to help justify the state of affairs, and convince the customer that they weren't being exploited.

I used what I call my "bucket analogy", because one of my key products was sold in 5 gallon pails.  I asked the contractor to tell me what was in the bucket.  He proceeded to list the ingredients, and he did a decent job, listing acrylic, water, silica aggregates and color pigments.  I reminded him that there were also anti-microbial admixtures, UV resistant additives and other, expensive ingredients such as titanium dioxide.  But, and this is the important part, I told him that there were a host of things in the bucket which he didn't even touch upon.  I explained that my company's entire company was in the bucket, from our R&D lab to the wages paid to our warehousemen.  The bucket held our marketing budget and that allowed us to reach both end users and designers such as architects and engineers.  Without that there'd be less work, fewer opportunities for this contractor to bid on.  Also in the bucket was our warranty department which stands behind product, even when oftentimes is was unclear whether it was the product at fault or not.  There was also my salary in the bucket and I was the guy paying for breakfast!  There's more, a lot more, but I wanted to get him to understand that the bucket sells for what it sells for, not simply due to what is in it, but for what got it there.  

The same is true for any product, even leather.  Glitzy websites aren't cheap.  Doing business online comes at a cost.  Having a shop obviously comes at a cost.  But even if you don't have a retail space, you probably will have rent to pay for a manufacturing space.  If you work out of your garage you still have costs such as electricity, gas, etc.  All of that has to be paid for from your product sales.

In my case, at that time, I was representing one of the top two products in the industry.  We'd argue about who was #1, but I was sure it was us.    The contractor was comparing the price he was paying to the price offered by one of my distributor's competitors, who represented a lesser product.  Demonstrably lesser, not even in the same league.  

I asked the contractor why he bought from my dealer.  He said because they were more reliable, had product when he needed it and were able to deliver it with less hassle than "the other guy".  So I asked him, with all due respect, how he thought my distributor was supposed to match pricing when they were so much better, clearly superior in every way.  Inventory is very expensive.  Contractors don't always plan ahead, so my dealer loaded up on product so they could still fulfil orders placed "at the last minute".  That comes at a cost.  Good drivers and reliable vehicles also come at a cost.  I suggested that wanting the best product along with the best service demanded an upcharge over an inferior product delivered with subpar service.  He had to agree.  He said he never thought of it that way and that he was appreciative of everything we both (distributor and manufacturer) had to offer.  

So why explain all of that?  Because even with all of the sales seminars I have attended over the years, and they have been many, that morning still sticks out as one of the best examples of how to justify price.

The company that's been discussed has set their pricing.  None of us know exactly how they arrived at it.  We have ideas, but we don't know exactly.  I only know as much as I can glean from their website.  

What I can say is they are trying to appeal to a certain customer.  If you look at some of the language and the fact they mention "carbon neutral shipping", it is clear that they are hoping to appeal to a niche audience.  

One way to look at it is, hey, if they can sell at that level, then maybe you can justify raising your own prices a little.  And do it with justification.  Does your belt contain your advertising costs, insurance, inventory, wage increases, etc.?  If not, it should.  How else are you going to pay for those things?

One last thing, and I'll keep it brief for those who have hung in there so far, I once had a "heart-to-heart" with a fledgling contractor.  This contractor was essentially a couple of wide-eyed tradesmen who decided to quit their jobs and "be their own bosses".  They wanted to take what they had learned, working for an established and respected, profitable contractor, and strike out on their own.  No problem, that happens all of the time.  Except they had zero experience in actually running a business.  They were good at their trade, some of the best, but that doesn't make you a boss.  That doesn't create in yourself the knowledge of how to run a business and achieve profitability.  Not at all.  

I asked them when they were going to stop "working for wages", and they looked at me quizzically, not understanding.  I told them they were taking work too cheaply and getting in way too deep.  I asked them how they were going to pay for their office space and what was going to happen should a truck break down or a mixer go kaput.  They finally understood.  They realized they were their own bosses now but at the end of the day they really weren't making any more money and had way more headaches as compared to working in the field.  Suddenly they understood why things were the way they were when they worked for someone else.  Some say "be careful what you wish for" because you might not know what it really is that you're asking.  I say go ahead and wish all you want, that's how skyscrapers are built, just keep your eyes open and never stop learning. 

Don't know that this answers why pricing is the way it is, but hopefully I showed that there's a lot more that goes into it than meets the eye.  Leather and labor are only the beginning.