Another price rise for ELC

[dmar836]

Regardless of how JC or anyone else is is doing, those in a cottage industry are not benefitted with sick time, vacation time, holiday time off, retirement fund matching plans, pensions, health and dental insurance, etc. Nor are the families they support. They must handle all of that along the way. I know several and while they love their work they are stuck in many ways. They don't have the option to jump ship to work for another cottage industry for better conditions, pay, or benefits.
If people would put this on paper for themselves, just to see what they would need to survive, not assuming anything, they might see that the prices are quite mild.
JMO,
Dave

 

[Rutger]

The guestimated summ of the cost of a jacket has been made before and I think it was sort of concluded then that the margin was nowhere near getting rich and retiring early when talking about the smaller bussinesses. 8-12 hours of labor and £300 for materials? Just a guess.
Well a £2995 jacket? that does sound like a healthy margin, and not one that I would fall for.

 

[Ken at Aero Leather]

The guestimated summ of the cost of a jacket has been made before and I think it was sort of concluded then that the margin was nowhere near getting rich and retiring early when talking about the smaller bussinesses. 8-12 hours of labor and £300 for materials? Just a guess.
Well a £2995 jacket? that does sound like a healthy margin, and not one that I would fall for.

Re the prices charged by the most expensive manufacturers, there seems to be a blindness to reality when it comes to judging quality, so many folk are blinded by price, highest must means best………….as if!!!!!!!!!!

What the public don’t always realise is there isn’t a great deal of difference between the prices of the top grade leathers yet there is a huge difference between the prices of jackets made from these leathers, , Shinki, Vicenza, Horween, Victoria etc, depending on who makes them.

Wages for direct production staff , cutters, machinists plus raw materials is the true cost, the rest is all about overheads, rent, advertising costs, money spent on trade shows, insurances, office staff wages etc etc. The annual sum spent on these items, though not directly part of the cost are unavoidably costed into the jacket price. This sum has to be divided by the number of jackets produced in a year to find the “hidden overhead” that adds to the true cost of producing an individual garment.

For simplicity, if a maker produces say, 1000 jackets a year and spends £100000 on these “overheads” then that maker has to add £100 to the cost of each jacket to cover these extras

If that same maker increases their production to 2000 jackets a year that “overhead” drops to £50 per jacket

The more a firm makes, the lower the hidden costs, therefore the cheaper they can sell their product. For British manufacturers, Eastman, Aero etc the lower exchange rate of the GB£ means our exports are now far more attractive to overseas buyers which (at Aero at least) has mean an upsurge in export orders. Although this reduces the individual overhead per jacket produced, this reduction is not quite wiping out the rise in costs of imported leather but it’s going some way to balancing the books. (Yes we have put some of our prices up, I think an average is about £20 retail)

We don’t advertise, do two or three trade shows a decade, and make around 3500/4000 jackets a year so our “overheads” per jacket are quite low in comparison with, for example, a company who makes around 600 or 700 jackets a year but does a large number of trade shows Worldwide, advertising etc so their “overheads” per jacket are much higher than Aero, similarly, Vanson’s / Schott’s etc “overheads” per item are probably lower than Aero’s as they make a lot more jackets than we do although they do advertise a lot.

Whether these (much) higher priced jackets are better that Aero’s or not is subjective but, like it or not, someone (the customer) has to pay for all the very high “overheads” involved in extensive promotional trips around the World, Trade Shows, Advertising, PR etc, I’d imaging several £100 more in many cases. We all know most of the cost of, say an Armani jacket, goes in the sales promotion rather than the garment

Forget the exchange rates, they’ve always fluctuated, to find out how much of the price has nothing to do with the actual garment is fairly easy to work out. Meanwhile British exports should be thriving and this will or should keep the prices down

 

[devilish]

I was actually thinking more of people living in the UK buying over-priced RM sheepskin jackets in London.

With regards to this question. One answer is maybe nobody does? Certain items are sometimes produced as 'Show Pieces' to promote the quality a company can attain and only ever sell in very small quantities. The other answer is the walk in factor. London is full of people with large amounts of disposable income. They will go to certain trendy streets or neighbourhoods and shop. Just walk in, try on and buy. They do not know or care about finding things online or the history behind the items. Sure they might be slightly drawn in by sales patter explaining this history. But the bottom line is they just want the most expensive piece they can find.
I've been in the RMC store in London a few times and seen it happen. People walk up to the window, say to each other "Oh, what's this place?" Walk in look around pick something out, buy it and go on their merry way none the wiser. You cannot underestimate the power of the walk in purchase or just how different the life of rich people is to that of normal folks.