Finished my clear enrollment finally today.
View attachment 1884750
Clear, as in, the skip the line thing?
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Finished my clear enrollment finally today.
View attachment 1884750
Yeah. I avoided it for yearsClear, as in, the skip the line thing?
Yeah. I avoided it for years
I’ve had tsa precheck and global entry for years, but I avoided clear because I didn’t want to enroll my iris in a private program. Before, most times the precheck line at the airport would be short so that clear wasn’t a large time savings. These days, I’ve seen some longer precheck lines, and clear means skipping those once travel resumes for me. It continues for my wife anyway. Enrollment was nothing—just scan eyes and fingers.Seems useful if you go to a lot of events. I got TSA Pre-Approval for airline travel for the same thing.
How big of a process is it?
I think if you ever met @Shiner, at least in the 2023 thread, you might find her adorable.Been a few days. Still clearing the fog from my brain after a bout with the 'VID. Lots of discussion on here lately, which is nice to see. Sure, it's a lot more of the bitching and moaning rather than the weaseling I've come to love over the years.
Anyhooooo, I've been thinking a lot about the 2 items that have generated the majority of the discussion: Cordovan price increase and no more AE-sponsored presence on this site and how both are indicative of a death knell for the company.
As usual, I'm a skeptic.
There's no way around it, the shell price increase sucks. And, if it were occurring in a vacuum, I'd probably be more concerned. But, it's not in a vacuum. EVERYTHING costs more right now and, according to emails from The Shoe Mart, Alden prices are set to increase in the pretty immediate future. I'd imagine the same will happen for many shoe companies imminently. So, the mindset of, "Well, I'll just have to buy shell from [Company X/Y/Z] instead of AE since the price difference now is negligible" will probably only be true for the next few weeks until those other companies follow suit.
Thinking about work for me, and we do annual price increases at the same time every year, and the majority of the industry is on the same time line. Historically, we'd increase our prices around 3% or so, but the past few years have seen unprecedented price changes as material costs skyrocket and supply chains crumble. In order to maintain some sort of semblance of respectable profit margins, we increased prices to the tune of about 25% in the past 3 years, including one year where we raised prices over 12%. Our material costs have gone up about 50% in that time same time frame, even though we're the clear market leader and can [theoretically] leverage our purchasing power. Shipping costs have gone through the roof. The world is nuts and prices reflect that. So, when I see an increase of about 13% for shell boots and another 8% for shell shoes, I just kind of shrug. Shell is expensive to begin with. It takes time to make. Production has been declining for years. This has been a storm brewing for quite some time and everyone is going to get wet.
As for the upcoming loss of @AE_Lauren, I'm sad about it. But, I get it. Companies are tightening belts and taking a hard look at where their dollars are going. I'm guessing someone in Caleres Finance is looking at the ROI of sponsorship here on Styleforum and not seeing what they'd hoped for when the idea was first floated. Like a good number of you, I'm not part of the Facebook group. While I don't share the exact same feelings about the Metaverse that a good number of you do, I do enjoy my anonymity, as it allow me to be the jackass you all occasionally tolerate here. The idea that @Shiner could find out my real name if I were to cross-post, terrifies me. I don't want that dude living in my head. I've seen what he's done to @Shoenut and I want no part of that. But, I get why AE would rather focus on a presence there than here. What does their money get them here that they can't get for free from the FB group? Sure, FB is a cesspool for the most part, and from the week or two I spent as a lurker in the FB group a couple of years ago, I believe that the overall discussion here is generally of a higher quality (my presence, excluded, obviously). But, is it a quality worth paying for? Without knowing the cost of sponsorship, or knowing the non-visible benefits they received from their sponsorship, I can't answer that. But, Caleres Finance did, for now. So it goes.
In the meanwhile, I'm going to shift back to putting emphasis on the "Appreciation" portion of this little group. Broke out the #8 shell Higgins Mill boots from the first AE trunk show. Still one of my favorites.
Love,
Donkey
View attachment 1884912
Been a few days. Still clearing the fog from my brain after a bout with the 'VID. Lots of discussion on here lately, which is nice to see. Sure, it's a lot more of the bitching and moaning rather than the weaseling I've come to love over the years.
Anyhooooo, I've been thinking a lot about the 2 items that have generated the majority of the discussion: Cordovan price increase and no more AE-sponsored presence on this site and how both are indicative of a death knell for the company.
As usual, I'm a skeptic.
There's no way around it, the shell price increase sucks. And, if it were occurring in a vacuum, I'd probably be more concerned. But, it's not in a vacuum. EVERYTHING costs more right now and, according to emails from The Shoe Mart, Alden prices are set to increase in the pretty immediate future. I'd imagine the same will happen for many shoe companies imminently. So, the mindset of, "Well, I'll just have to buy shell from [Company X/Y/Z] instead of AE since the price difference now is negligible" will probably only be true for the next few weeks until those other companies follow suit.
Thinking about work for me, and we do annual price increases at the same time every year, and the majority of the industry is on the same time line. Historically, we'd increase our prices around 3% or so, but the past few years have seen unprecedented price changes as material costs skyrocket and supply chains crumble. In order to maintain some sort of semblance of respectable profit margins, we increased prices to the tune of about 25% in the past 3 years, including one year where we raised prices over 12%. Our material costs have gone up about 50% in that time same time frame, even though we're the clear market leader and can [theoretically] leverage our purchasing power. Shipping costs have gone through the roof. The world is nuts and prices reflect that. So, when I see an increase of about 13% for shell boots and another 8% for shell shoes, I just kind of shrug. Shell is expensive to begin with. It takes time to make. Production has been declining for years. This has been a storm brewing for quite some time and everyone is going to get wet.
As for the upcoming loss of @AE_Lauren, I'm sad about it. But, I get it. Companies are tightening belts and taking a hard look at where their dollars are going. I'm guessing someone in Caleres Finance is looking at the ROI of sponsorship here on Styleforum and not seeing what they'd hoped for when the idea was first floated. Like a good number of you, I'm not part of the Facebook group. While I don't share the exact same feelings about the Metaverse that a good number of you do, I do enjoy my anonymity, as it allow me to be the jackass you all occasionally tolerate here. The idea that @Shiner could find out my real name if I were to cross-post, terrifies me. I don't want that dude living in my head. I've seen what he's done to @Shoenut and I want no part of that. But, I get why AE would rather focus on a presence there than here. What does their money get them here that they can't get for free from the FB group? Sure, FB is a cesspool for the most part, and from the week or two I spent as a lurker in the FB group a couple of years ago, I believe that the overall discussion here is generally of a higher quality (my presence, excluded, obviously). But, is it a quality worth paying for? Without knowing the cost of sponsorship, or knowing the non-visible benefits they received from their sponsorship, I can't answer that. But, Caleres Finance did, for now. So it goes.
In the meanwhile, I'm going to shift back to putting emphasis on the "Appreciation" portion of this little group. Broke out the #8 shell Higgins Mill boots from the first AE trunk show. Still one of my favorites.
Love,
Donkey
Isn’t one of the ways a company finds out how successful they are on SF is to see how much traffic is sent through the affiliate link? I have made all my purchases through my SA. Although I have purchased about 11K in shoes and most likely more. There is no proof that SF has weaseled me to buy. I wonder if this metric had anything to do with AE’s decision to vacate.Looks like today is Day 1 of AE no longer being a forum sponsor. It just feels weird not seeing the affiliate link on the right side of the SF homepage anymore.