Working With Retailers: Lessons Learned

[chrisash]

A lot of good sense there Kristina 

[nstarleather]

7 hours ago, KristinaDRawlings said:

Scale really only works if your gear is made overseas by someone else's machinery.

Yeah my question for them was “you want me to work harder for less money?”...we do volume discounts only on small items that we can knock out quickly: drawstring pouches, mystery braid bracelets,etc.

Edited May 23, 2020 by nstarleather

[KDR]

On 5/23/2020 at 12:19 PM, nstarleather said:

Yeah my question for them was “you want me to work harder for less money?”...we do volume discounts only on small items that we can knock out quickly: drawstring pouches, mystery braid bracelets,etc.

I know.  I'd be asked to do a discount for, say, a dozen whips.  Handmade, multi tailed, braided whips.  I'd try to be polite but essentially say no, plus you're lucky I'm not charging you double!  And that speaks not just to the amount of time something takes, and the physical effort involved, but also to the work that *not* able to do in that time.  The braided whips were the most expensive pieces we made for wholesale, but the time involved meant they were probably the lowest margin items, too.  So the time it took to clear say 500 dollars making whips was time *not* spent making maybe 1000 dollars on faster, cheaper, higher margin, smaller pieces.  And at some point you just have to pull the plug on that, or increase the price so that you won't sell too many of them!

[nstarleather]

13 hours ago, KristinaDRawlings said:

I know.  I'd be asked to do a discount for, say, a dozen whips.  Handmade, multi tailed, braided whips.  I'd try to be polite but essentially say no, plus you're lucky I'm not charging you double!  And that speaks not just to the amount of time something takes, and the physical effort involved, but also to the work that *not* able to do in that time.  The braided whips were the most expensive pieces we made for wholesale, but the time involved meant they were probably the lowest margin items, too.  So the time it took to clear say 500 dollars making whips was time *not* spent making maybe 1000 dollars on faster, cheaper, higher margin, smaller pieces.  And at some point you just have to pull the plug on that, or increase the price so that you won't sell too many of them!

The other thing they don't get is that leather cost doesn't drop very dramatically once you get above a certain level.  The difference between ordering 2000 feet vs 5000 or even 10,000 is usually a low single digit percentage. 

All the items I make that get a quantity discount are under $5 wholesale. 

[FabPhoenix]

Thank you for the great advice.  I'm new to leatherwork as a business but have experience in business creating custom works using other materials.  Your insight KDR is right spot on. So glad I found this site to communicate with and learn from fellow artisans. 

[Alsopp]

Good info. It will come in handy. 
Can you tell me the source, or is this your own?