Business is slow, how about you

[Randy Cornelius]

I have been sitting around with not much to do in the shop these days. Mostly working on stuff for myself that don't pay. It seems that the 1st of April someone just turned off the tap and orders stopped coming in. I was very busy during Christmas and right after but not now. Is anyone else experiancing a slow time like me? I got a call today from a sales lady from Siegel wanting me to buy skirting leather they have on sale. I was telling her that I did not have much business and that I could not place an order. She stated that she has heard that from a lot of shops that she has called. She said one customer that has bought from her for years turned the shop over to his wife so he could go get another job to pay the bills. I think the price of gas is having a trickle down effect on all business.

Just wanting to know if I am alone or if anyone else is slow these days.

Randy

[wolvenstien]

I cant speak on my leather work.... I have never had allot of business to depend upon... but I can speak from my uncle who runs a tire store. The past few months have not been nice to him, and he is constantly trying to figure in additional means of making money. The fuel is not helping anything, it is hurting, but we are experiencing a nationwide recession. Next time you take your wife out to eat, take a look around. Are there as many people in the restaurant as there normally would be? I took my wife to a nice restaurant this past friday on her birthday. This restaurant always has stand by waiting especially on a friday. When we got there at 6pm, we were seated immediately. I didnt think about it at the time, but after talking to my uncle this weekend, he mentioned going to Red Lobster on that same friday. The manager let half the staff go home around 7pm when he was there eating. Everything is being effected in one way or the other...

[Beaverslayer]

Up here it's pretty much business as usual, but I am always watching the news. I think the main problem in the US these days, is the one with the sub prime mortgages. This seams to have really affected all the different aspects of the economy. Nobody has confidence in the financial markets, so they are investing in the comodities, such as gas, oil, gold and the like. The paper here today said that by this weekend gas will be $1.50 per litre, this equates to $5.76 per US gallon, which just is not right for a place that produces so much oil.

I hope your business increases soon, maybe when you all get those "Stimulus" cheques, all will be good again.

Ken

[tonyc1]

Up here it's pretty much business as usual, but I am always watching the news. I think the main problem in the US these days, is the one with the sub prime mortgages. This seams to have really affected all the different aspects of the economy. Nobody has confidence in the financial markets, so they are investing in the comodities, such as gas, oil, gold and the like. The paper here today said that by this weekend gas will be $1.50 per litre, this equates to $5.76 per US gallon, which just is not right for a place that produces so much oil.

I hope your business increases soon, maybe when you all get those "Stimulus" cheques, all will be good again.

Ken

It's between $1.49 and $1.54 here in Tasmania now. We might have to start using horseback again if this keeps up!

[wolvenstien]

It's between $1.49 and $1.54 here in Tasmania now. We might have to start using horseback again if this keeps up!

Hey, people start using horseback.... they will stimulate the leather industry....

Fuel here is 3.69 a gallon for regular....

Edited May 13, 2008 by wolvenstien

[JRedding]

Randy, we had a stretch last fall that seemed pretty slow we were behind enough it allowed us to catch up on a few things and it picked up around Christmas and has remained steady since. I've heard the same as you from some suppliers and I seem to be getting more courtesy calls about specials and odd lots than normal from some. I can only speak of the conditions here but the horse market is in the crapper in our part of the country. Good broke saddlehorses brought a fair price at the annual spring horse sale here last weekend but consignment was down about two thirds. With the price of hay last fall horses were being given away and dumped on the BLM ground to winter with the wild horses south of town.Weiner and yearling colts are pretty much free. The county here wintered so many horses that had been stray penned and remained unclaimed they were boarding horses at the fairgrounds because no one anticipated getting horses dumped on them like that and they didn't have the facilities to handle it. It's only my opinion but a bad horse market and seeing people get out of it alltogether because it's too expensive coupled with the fact there's fast becoming a saddlemaker for every horse still in operation, I don't see it getting easier anytime soon. I've worked with companies that have maintained ad space in the Horseman pretty much continuously since 1991 so I've watched the ads monthly since then. Last year in the pre Christmas edition I beleive it's the gift guide I counted around fourteen ads for custom saddles clustered within three pages, I didn't notice several of the old tough regulars like Big Bend, Ryons, and Platte Valley amongst them I beleive they had ads somewhere else in the magazine. Most of the fourteen if I remember right were small shops and/or new advertisers. It's just the most I've ever noticed flooding in there pre Christmas. I've gotten the feeling the middle ground market amongst the backyard horseman or pleasure rider may be taking a decrease in size due to lack of disposable income , probably brought on by high gas prices and higher everything prices because of high gas prices like you said. Add in the increased number of shops soliciting these folks for their business, it's starting to appear to me like there's more people seated at the table to get a piece of shrinking pie.

[wildrose]

I think the focus is going away from handcrafted items. People want stuff cheaply, and they don't care if it's "made in China", etc.

I work p/t at a retail clothing shop in the local mall, and it is the slowest I've ever seen anywhere. In 3 hrs we might get one paying customer and one browser. Sometimes we only get one person in at all!

[gunfighter48]

I manage a self storage facility and our occupancy is down 4 % ( about 20 units) from the first of the year. Last year we were at 90% occupied or better. This year I'm having trouble trying to maintain 85%. The gas prices are really starting to hurt everyones budgets. And our expenses keep going up along with everyone else's. We just had to raise our rates by an average of $10 per month per unit. Our electric bill went up 15% in January. Seattle is just starting to see the recession that the rest of the country has been in for about the last year.

John

[Ian]

I am conviced that cheap imports are a huge reason for the decline in the leather industry. I remember when owning a leather jacket was quite an extravagance - now Pakistan and China have flooded the market, mostly with buffalo, pigskin and split leather.

A leather auto interior was considered the realm of luxury cars - now it's common. Same with leather furniture. The cheap split leather sofas with vinyl backs and sides are in some cases cheaper than regular upholstery, yet proudly carry the 'Genuine Leather' label. And, by the way, someone told me (and I don't know if it's true) that the Japanese auto makers are now buying half the world's supply of cowhide.

The real travesty is the free use of the word 'genuine'. A customer asked me why my plain bridle leather belts were $30, when they could buy a 'Genuine Leather' belt at the flea market for $3.00. I wondered the same thing, so I picked up a couple of the $3 jobs. Well, they turned out to be plastic with something that looked like shredded cardboard inside. I've seen bonded leather marked as 'genuine'. How can they legally do that?

The average person can't possibly be as educated on the various products that go under the banner of 'leather'. I believe that the garbage leather coming in from Asia has seriously hurt the prestige that leather products used to have. The high end market, like the incredible saddles that have been posted here will probably never feel the pinch, but surely saddle shops making riding saddles must have been hurt by Mexican and Indian saddles. The same goes for harness. A friend just paid 6 grand for a used show harness for his Morgan - a beautiful piece of work, but how long before Indian factories are producing something similar enough to satisfy the average driver? When people hold up Amish made harness as the mark of quality (when I have found the opposite to be true in many cases) how do harness shops compete with folks who are happy to work for 4 bucks an hour?

For myself, doing mostly items for motorcycles there is still a market for high end items, but I have stopped trying to compete with manufactured saddlebags - some of which are very well made, using quality leather and hardware, yet sell at a price that I can't hope to compete with.

I keep holding my breath, waiting for the bubble that the Cable Channels created with the bike builder shows to pop. I know that motorcycle sales are down dramatically and some of the custom builders are going out of business, so it may be happening now. I know quite a few guys who took out second mortgages to buy custom built bikes. You know how that story ends.

The much publicized prices for seats by Paul Cox and Duane Ballard created a thousand basement seat makers turning out seats of various degrees of quality. Though the exceptional makers like David and others are few and far between. Still, the lines start to get blurred.

Never the less, even though I consider myself to be fairly average in the skill department, I don't intend to stop what I'm doing because of the dip in the market, though I might find myself reducing the variety of items I make and relying more on my 'day job' and less on the leather business. And, when the business drops at the end of the riding season, I'm going to spend more time developing finer skills and drifting back into the hobby position I used to occupy.

Edited May 13, 2008 by Ian

[mulefool]

Well, so far (Knock on Wood) things have been pretty good here. But I do admit to being nervous. I build pack saddles at the high end price wise of that market. We recently attended a large packing clinic where we usually do quite well. Last year we had our best year ever. We didn't do as well this year and sold more smaller ticket items. However in general I'm still really busy. I don't advertise doing any repair work and don't encourage it, but I've thought if things got slow I might promote that locally since there is definitely a market for it. I am kind of worried about the horse market, but I guess you just have to wait and see and maybe have some contingency plans in mind. I've also become alot more on top of my own costs and trying to keep things in check. of course I should be doing that anyway. It's hard though to feel like you need to raise prices at the same time everyone is feeling the pinch already.