make a moose hide vest

[Cora]

I was hoping that someone here could help me. I was recently asked to make a moose hide vest

for a customer with all lacing, no machine stitching of any kind. He will supply the moose hide. I have no idea what to charge him for making it. It will be just a plain vest no pockets or tooling, but he wants every open edge and seam area laced.

Thanks in advance.

Cora

[Cora]

I forgot to mention that he wants all the lacing to be done in deer hide also supplied by him.

Thanks again

Cora

[Mike]

Will the deer hide already be cut into lace or do you have to do that as well?

[yaklady]

In the shop where I work, we make New Zealand elk sleeveless shirts with 2 front pockets and lace them with kangaroo. I do believe the selling price on them is $1100. The lacing is double-loop around the edges, and a braid on the inner seams. Of course, the shop has a lot of overhead that you may not have to worry about.

Kathy

[Cora]

I will have to cut the lace. My shop is located on our property, so my overhead is minimal, power and a portion of my phone.

Cora

[HorsehairBraider]

Well this isn't real specific, but this is how I look at it.

Imagine that after you sell this vest, the guy comes back and says, "Wow! That was great - I need 1,000 more. How quick can you get 'em done?" Now imagine you have to make 1,000 of those suckers. Suddenly your overhead is going to start to matter. After all, staying where you do is not free. (Even if you still live with your mom and dad you should at least be paying rent!) Your power and heat are not free. Your food to keep yourself alive to do this is not free. Clothes are not free. And so on.

You have to come up with a price that helps to pay for all of that, and that is high enough you don't end up being a person who simply hands the money from the customer to the guy who sells food (or shoes, or heat, or electricity etc.). If you can't make a profit you'll go out of business, and that is no help to anyone.

For those who say, "But I don't do this for a living!" Well, maybe not NOW you don't - ! If the guy actually *does* come back and ask you for 1,000, you might just be in business - but you won't be for long if you have not thought about all this stuff. The customer will not be happy if you radically change the price upwards AFTER he has already bought from you. You can always come down!

[sheathmaker]

Be realistic and estimate how long the vest will take to make. You will have practically no material cost, but if you did that would have to be figured in a cost plus 20%. You have to recover the waste because you paid for it in the full side. My shop price is $25.00 per hour, plus material and that is the minimum. I frequently charge more than that.

Having said all that, my shop is fully equipped with a couple of sewing machines and a lot of other time saving equipment so I can accomplish quite a bit in that $25.00 hour. If you are just starting out you may have to lower the hourly rate to compensate for lack of speed and experience, but I can tell you if I was making the vest as you described it would be not less than $300 and probably more.

Paul

[Beaverslayer]

Cora, I'm not sure if you've ever seen my work or website, but I think you would agree that I might know a thing or two about hand laced vests.

For starters, the material is the smallest part of the total package. My cost for the leather, liner, and all the lace (which I cut myself) is under $120.00

The time it takes to size. layout the design, make the patterns, cut the leather, cut the lace, and then punch ALL those holes you can't imagine.

The starting price for one of my vest's is $650.00, and depending on the added extras like carved shoulder pieces, tassles (very hard to get straight) and so on will add to the price.

Just a basic, you could say "From Stock" vest, takes me about 40 hours to make, with most of that time, say 30 hours, just to lace it. I'll tell you, that when you're done, you'll think you were NUTS to ask whatever you did ask for it. I've thought that my vest should sell for something in the line of what YakLady had mentioned, but I'll be damned if I can find anyone that will spend that kind of money....Where's Britany Spears when you need her....

Another thing to think about, is that the deerskins your customer has, may not make the best lace, and this will just cause you ALL kinds of problems. I will look through all the hides at the leather dealer before I find and decide on the one I will use to make lace with.

One thing I have done in the past, is when the customer wanted to supply there own material. I still charged them the same ammount, as if I had supplied the material. In this case I informed them beforehand as to this. They agreed with my price, and decission to charge the extra because of the reasons for doing so. Not being able to see the leather they wanted to use I could not guarantee the final outcome and look of the vest.

Kinda like the sign you see in the mechanic shop for hourly rates.

If you watch, they charge more....

Hope this helps.

Ken

[Cora]

Ken

I have been to your website, you do amazing work. I was telling my husband that the next time I fly up to Fort McMurray to see him I was going to book my flight through Calgary so I could swing by your shop and probably spend some of his hard earned money HA HA. Thank you for the advice, it gives me a good idea of what I'm in for. 30 hours of lacing Oh my aching fingers, hands, wrists etc.

Thanks again

Cora