Unfunded Liabilities: a/k/a The Cloth Thread

[gdl203]

definitely darker and bluer IRL

305 is a true navy, 306 a midnight navy

 

[bertie]



I'd be interested to hear from some other people who have had experience in arranging fabric runs, because I'm pretty sure this has been done before (I recall a brown fresco and some other projects). I would be fine with paying an extra 10-15% on top of the quoted price if it helped this go through since I thought the initial quoted price was pretty reasonable.

Presumably everthing is negotiable. Either we use a thrid party to do the distribution or we pay Reid the extra amount for handling. My guess is that the profit margins for LL are so big that the incremenal handling costs are easy to swallow. I was in on Slewfoot fresco and I think the costs were about the same as regular fresco AND Minnis will sell cut lengths to individuals so they are set up to handle this type of retail transaction. Maybe Reid does not want to set the precedent but adding another 10% might entice them and would not stop me from wanting the fabric.

 

[RogerC]

Nancy worsted flannel: my Fox blazer is holdng up fine.

 

[gopherblue]



Presumably everthing is negotiable. [snip] Maybe Reid does not want to set the precedent but adding another 10% might entice them and would not stop me from wanting the fabric.

Whoa...let's not get carried away. An extra 3% is plenty.

 

[AdamWill]

Are 0305 and 0306 darker in real life than pictured here? Also, are they worsted or woolen?

https://shop.hfwltd.com/collection/21

I mentioned a few pages back, a lot of the HFW photos seem to have been taken with flash, which makes them pretty much useless.

If you Google Images the book name and swatch number you may find different samples from another site, or HFW will actually mail you five sample swatches for free if you fill out a form on the site. Mine made it to Canada in a week or so. (And then I bought stuff from Huddersfield Cloth instead anyway...sorry, HFW!) There's a guy selling a lot of the HFW swatch books on eBay, too (though quite expensive, 25 quid each).

 

[bertie]

of course - we can negotiate

 

[jrd617]



Whoa...let's not get carried away. An extra 3% is plenty.

We're talking about a range of $2.50 to $12.50 for extra handling charges on a 2.5 meter order. (3 to 15%) I really don't mind the extra $10 if it gets the order finished. Price of two cups of coffee.

This is assuming that R&T even lets us pay for them to cut the cloth in-house. They seem to have bigger fish to catch and limited resources to allocate. (Selling to garment makers with big orders). Just wish they had made that more clear to begin with and not nodded approvingly to everything I proposed. Would have saved us this headache.

 

[dopey]



The money/order size was never an issue. We had almost double the amount needed for an order (100 out of 60 meters)

They are saying they don't want to ship to 20+ people now, even if we pay shipping and handling. This was the understanding I had with the rep

Again, can we get some people that are actually in on the order to comment?

I am not sure what you are asking. I contacted the person you told me to and still haven't heard back. Obviously, I now understand why.

I have wondered how much the mills' reluctance to deal with individuals is because it is too much trouble, they don't need the extra sales, they have lockups with distributes, or whatever. It seems foolish and a remnant of a prior era where the end-users had no idea who they were or any interest in buying cloth direct. there is clearly a market for this and I am not sure why they aren't jumping on it. If it costs a little extra to deal with individuals, they should simply charge for it - say $10 per cut or something like that.

And they are foolish if they think they are cannibalizing sales. This thread is witness to the fact that people who buy cloth, often do it because they like it. Buying this length does not mean I won't buy any more cloth.

 

[jrd617]

^ Yes, the R&T rep told me that she would send me specific payment contact details that I could pass along to everyone by late Monday. They didn't materialize by Monday. (There seems to have been time-lag for when R&T finally grasped that the cloth needed to be cut up and sent out to indviduals) You wanted to get ahead of the curve because of the Passover holiday so I gave you the email of the rep I had been corresponding with.

Very frustrating that R&T suddenly became reluctant to sell to individuals because I communicated to the rep all along that it was going to individuals. They seem to think that selling to individuals will "cannibalize" resources from fulfillment of big orders to the garment industry.

It would definitely benefit them to get cloth into the hands of forumites. Get their product out to new customers. Isn't Reid and Taylor kind of obscure compared to Huddersfield and Harrisons? Certainly a lot of menswear influence here - bespoke tailors (Despos and NMWA/Formosa) and individuals.

 

[Wallcloud]

I would certainly be willing to pay a surcharge to get this done.

 

[Slickman]

I think R&T was bought by Indian company

 

[terrorsquad]

I think R&T was bought by Indian company

Yup, this is what i was told

 

[johanm]

I wouldn't be surprised if some tailor caught wind of this SF group buy and complained to Reid & Taylor.

I know that Shirtmaven from CEGO has directly complained to Grandi & Rubinelli, among other shirting merchants, about forum members organizing direct group buys. It undermines the tailor's ability to add a markup on the cloth on top of the tailoring charge, and also forces them to compete with CMT tailors that might not have the scale or resources to offer the name brand fabric in question.

 

[mktitsworth]

Not that I'm in on this, but why not consider the option of having the whole roll of cloth shipped to someone and then asking a tailor known to the forum:

1) Whether or not they would like to participate in the buy provided they have not previously heard about it.
2) Whether or not they could point us to someone (perhaps themselves) who would be willing to cut the cloth for a surcharge to be divided amongst the buyers?

This removes the R&T problem. Given that jrd is the one who has organized and dealt with the whole thing, I'd imagine him to be the person to have things shipped to, but this also puts him as the person handling the second part. If a tailor were willing to get in on it and cut the cloth for us, it seems reasonable also to have it shipped to them in this scenario.

If they suddenly don't want to deal with getting payments from so many people, this sort of thing can be dealt with as well, but I think in this case it would be an indicator of a bigger problem for you.

 

[AdamWill]

is there some kind of special not-immediately-obvious Tailor Magic involved in cutting rolls of cloth? because, you know, you'd think someone could rustle up a tape measure and a pair of scissors.