The new official TOJ thread, 2011 - Page 1414

Well, you said it yourself there, but that is one example of those things that seem easy to do or simple, but in reality are harder to do. I mean, I agree, there's not much in the hand there presenting itself for the price - but the reality is that, at least in terms of examining its viability, you gotta see every product almost at the same level. If it's brought to market, each thing is a baby for the producer. On the other hand, I'm not telling people to give up their rights as consumers, to not question the value of items. There's obviously a divide there and will be forever, but it can also result in progress as well, so that is a good thing.

Things can be hard to do for a number of reasons, but mostly, it's in the preparatory stages. A great product is the result of lots of planning and preparation, making and do-overs; occasionally you get lucky and there's things are just synergistically and serendipitously created from what is inherently good and the puzzle is easy to solve. Those things are rare, I feel.

Maybe for bigger brands with a ton of inefficiency and lots of underused resources, they can wave the wand and get something made from what they already have. Me, I'm like a featherweight in this ring, I have the work of three people to put something into production, and seriously, there are times when it's a single needle hitting textile, that is TOJ. Even at full swing, it's not much more than that, at all. Maybe two needles hitting textile at the same time. We're definitely not in the fields or the mills getting things made exactly how we want them, we don't have the cost resources or the market to dump that on. Neither sounds good to me, so I won't be doing that anytime soon, either.
There can be a lot of custom work involved, a lot of one-off disposable work and research going into something. For brands like mine that have no footing or even equipment or suppliers in something like a scarf, then that's an anthill that looks more like a mountain to me.

There are specialist brands with a good relationship with whoever has the abilities to make scarves and maybe a limited number of other things - they don't do leather jackets. We do leather jackets, but don't really have the resources to make scarves or silks, whatever it may be.


to answer the other question - lambskin gloves are out, that isn't the right material for gloves. There's tons more movement and tension inside a glove than a jacket, and more wear involved, so you need a pliable and elastic but tough leather, with small pores, possibly and preferably even (lamb has large pores and a delicate finish, obviously) - deerskin is the leather of choice for gloves. Lambskin gloves would end up shredded to bits within a month.

There was absolutely no margin on those wallets, we made like $10 a pop on them. Wasn't enough considering the number of train rides it took to put the orders in and then pick them up each time. The price should've been higher, but I would've wanted to escalate the quality even higher if I was raising the price - and I didn't really have anything else to put into those, so that option was out. We just let them die for that reason alone. When I go meet up with TOJ dudes, a surprising number of them have TOJ wallets though, and they're always keen to show me the evo on them, haha. It's great, I never expected that response.

yes, probably too thin, also insanely expensive for the kind of deerskin I've seen thus far - so we've never even bothered to try. A black French deerhide would cost me almost $150 each, and the size isn't always that big, not like a cow or something - more closer to a big sheep - so we'd need multiples. We use 6 lambs per jacket, so I'd figure we'd need at least 3 deers, maybe 4. materials and labor alone would be more than what I sell a TOJ lamb jacket for.

http://www.webbikeworld.com/women-motorcycle-clothing/deerskin-jacket/

Google brought this up - insane. I have no idea how they sell this for $199. I mean, yeah it's made in Pakistan, but still, I have no idea how to sell a leather jacket for $199. You're talking like $75 in labor and materials, for 4 hides and linings, plus hardware. Unbelievable. FWIW the French deerskin I was talking about earlier looks completely different than this stuff. if you've ever seen nice deerskin gloves, you know what the leather looks like, it kinda resembles pigskin but slightly smoother and waterproof. The stuff in the article might be bullshit too, looks more like goat and it could just be Pakistani/Kashmiri mountain goat sourced locally.