What To Line With ... Difficult Customer

[DavidL]

The type of people that are really picky tend to be customers for life, if you provide them with excellent customer service. 85 percent of people will not rebuy if they had a bad experience, there are so many other options. If your too stacked up in orders send a rough estimate and once they confirm the deal order the additional leather.

You could find the cost of buying the leather plus shipping and factor it in and break down the cost in front of the customer. Customer will have to end up paying for the cost of shipping and hide. The price will be high to buy an entire hide so at least the customer will walk away with the thought that they were treated well and a future purchase wouldn't be out of the picture. Other options like finding a small piece on ebay or garment/upholstery leather could be used.

If anything you could find a segment of the market that you may have not know was there, exotic holsters or holsters made specifically for women.

Just my 2 cents.

[Lobo]

Many people have ideas in their heads about what they think a holster should be and how it should be made. It might help to keep in mind that when you do it their way, and it doesn't work as they envisioned, they will always remember the bum who failed to turn their dream into reality, but they will never remember that they had a bad idea to start out with.

[St8LineGunsmith]

I'd suggest she use Someone Else????

DING DING DING DING... Wehave a winner folks!

run the other way and don't look back!

[malabar]

I keep a roll of kipskin on hand. When someone wants a holster lined with "something soft," I dig it out, let them feel it, and they're usually sold.

tk

[Renaissanceman]

Have to agree with Eaglestroker,

Pig split is soft and durable.

[WinterBear]

You might tell her a big problem with velvet is that the nap is made of cut threads. When exposed to rubbing, those threads will break or pull out of the weave, leaving fuzz everywhere (and probably not good for the gun to get those clogging things up), and the weave that is left behind becomes the very definition of threadbare. Velvet gowns, velvet children's toys, and velvet upholstery all tend to show wear quickly where the nap is rubbed--so where the arms of the dress rub the ribs, where a child carries their teddy bear and drags the leg on the ground, and where the seat of someone's pants rubs the seat of a velvet chair. A thrift shop might have a article of children's clothing worn threadbare that can be bought for a very minimal price that you can show her, and then maybe you can coax her into something more appropriate after viewing it, while making her think that the change is her idea.

[GrampaJoel]

You might try some newbuck. It looks like velvet but will wear pretty good. Takes oil ok too. That is it won't give up, the ghost if some oil gets on it.

I'd bet that she won't be putting the gun in and out of the holster very often. Especially if she is asking for velvet.

It would seem to me that she would know how a good holster is built if she had a lot of gun drawing experience.

Joel

[reuben cogburn]

I gave up modifying my patterns to suit others.. I got tired of losing $$ on the jobs. If I have a pattern, it is built that way. No substitutions. I had a customer dislike my replacement because it was built better than the piece of junk she bought in Guatamala (seriously).... She needed it replaced because it was under built tourist junk...

[Jim]

This is a classic case of "the customer ain't always right, but they think they are because they think they know more than you do." (Okay, that was a little longer than I thought it should be.) But, you get the point. I have had to turn down custom jobs for folks because what they wanted was not gonna work and they were not going to be happy and I did not want to deal with the whinning about it afterwards. RUN!!