Quote:
Originally Posted by
BB1 
Leather jackets are one of the most likely items to be heavily discounted these days. I've always been able to buy Japanese leathers for about 50% off retail, and there are others on here whom have bought high-end leathers at even deeper discounts.
Leathers are just traditionally marked up because a good market can hold higher priced leather jackets, that is about it. The Slimane-era DH leathers held their value for the time, a couple years ago, Rick leathers were a commodity, Julius has come and gone, but if the aesthetic is over, then they are worth no more than $500-1000 on the used market/a slow moving sales season, even if they are big dollar leathers. There's definitely a base price for a used leather, but there's also a ceiling depending on the style/label.
Reason being; leathers get to enjoy hugely inflated margins, just because they are leather, so they get made, they get pushed, and if they're hot, like Rick leathers a few years ago, then they get pushed hard. Using RO as an example: Rick often makes the same jacket styles in both leather and cloth versions; the former are often $1000 more than the cloth versions, but why? The people making the jackets are obviously the same, cutting from the same pattern, pushing textile through the same machine using the same thread, so labor cost would be exactly the same at his level; the difference in material cost would be less than $100, so total difference in out the door cost between the $3000 leather version and the $1500 cloth version of the same jacket would be less than $100.
Aero leather, Lost Worlds, those companies sell good leather jackets at reasonable prices, because they sell direct, which in itself is not stylish because it doesn't contain the element of brand cachet usually. Fashionable leather jackets will always be $2-3000, because they include some or many middlemen. If you want a jacket that fits slimly, this dilemma will always occur, time and again.
