Roy's Jeans - Single Man Made

Originally Posted by Robert

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Separated Pending Divorce Man Made, anyone?
The pockets will have holes in them so that the future ex-wife can take the money right out without you knowing.

Originally Posted by kiya

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Hardware was different on the early pairs, leather is thicker and has gone through two steps of dying AND tanning, he's tweaked more of the details like the hip outseam stitch. Also, his first set of jeans which he was selling direct were in his words "practice".

My gen. 1 pair was dyed and sun-tanned too, not to mention it's bridle leather and hand-carved... the later patches were grainier steer-hide? The latest patch were stamped according to your website description? Has Roy stopped hand-carving each patch?

The hardware on mine were pretty good, can't imagine the new YKK stuff would be more expensive than a couple more bucks on a single pair, if more expensive at all.

I'm very happy with my 'practice' jeans, and I would recommend to those who haven't handled a pair of Roy's to do so. But my Roy's certainly haven't made me rethink denim - same concept of one-man workshop has been done by guys like Ande Whall, Double Volante, etc before.

Certainly agree that at the $275 price-range, I can easily get myself a pair of The Flat Head, Studio D'artisan, Iron Heart, etc straight from Japan - competition is definitely tougher now

I think there's a typo on the selfedge site. There are a few 2s where there should be 1s. I guess you have to keep in mind price elasticity when pricing these things ie making 100% more profit on one tenth as many customers (loss), but I'm not sure how that works in high fashion. They're great jeans though.

good point mike, and thats nice to know. i would think a good majority of the increase is good ol fashion profit for se. if he gets away with it thats great!

Prior to this distribution deal with Kiya/Self Edge you only had one party that had to make a acceptable profit (Roy). Now you have two parties involved that had to make a profit that makes sense financially to them. A price increase was inevitable.

If they had kept the prices the same then that would have meant a 50% cut in profit to Roy which would make no financial sense.

Roy and Kiya/Self Edge are businesses and as such need to make a profit. Nothing wrong with that.

Originally Posted by Odd I/O

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Prior to this distribution deal with Kiya/Self Edge you only had one party that had to make a acceptable profit (Roy). Now you have two parties involved that had to make a profit that makes sense financially to them. A price increase was inevitable.

If they had kept the prices the same then that would have meant a 50% cut in profit to Roy which would make no financial sense.

Roy and Kiya/Self Edge are businesses and as such need to make a profit. Nothing wrong with that.

Name me one even semi-established fashion brands that distribute by themselves as this type of lower pricepoint? You guys are fighting the system, there is nothing special with that situation. Brands that distribute directly do it like Burberry; at the same pricepoints as in theirs and other stores. As I previously said what you had before was an obscure, non-established, hardly distributed brand kickstarting their business with direct marketing. A situation that was akin to selling to friends of friends in the days before the internet.

Right and consider why Roy went on hiatus in the first place... because he got overloaded. This relationship allows him to delegate the administrative/distribution/business aspects while concentrating on his day job (Which I'm guessing he still has the metal working related position) and focus on production and the higher prices probably also scales demand down to what he can handle as well. Nothing about his operation indicates that he wants to turn into a fashion empire so it's probably all in all what makes the most sense for his goals.

Anyway, I don't own Roy and I'm not sure that I plan on doing so. I just don't get what's so hard to get. If no one is willing to pay the prices and he still wants to sell jeans then something may give, but I have the feeling that thigns will work out a-okay.

To summarize: Jeans are no longer 150 dollars because the old model of him doing everything production side as well as distribution/sales/business/administrative stuff no longers work and now he has Selfedge to help him with that and that means they deserve to wet their beak thus increased prices. Who knows maybe denim costs are going up as well with the cotton shortage going on and that might factor in too. Chillax and vote with your dollars.

Originally Posted by whatever123

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good point mike, and thats nice to know. i would think a good majority of the increase is good ol fashion profit for se. if he gets away with it thats great!

Unless you have some special understanding of Roy's profit margin, material costs (likely much higher than Japanese competitors given his small operation), etc then perhaps you should quit until you get further behind. This is no SE conspiracy to make 75% profit margin or something ridiculous.

Originally Posted by whatever123

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whats with the large price increase from when you could buy from roy? is it different denim? better hardware? aside from another cut, what is the difference? it looks like the same stuff you could get from roy but for alot less...just wondering?

I suspect that he figured out that spending that much time on a pair of 150$ jeans = the poor house.

Originally Posted by acularw

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Unless you have some special understanding of Roy's profit margin, material costs (likely much higher than Japanese competitors given his small operation), etc then perhaps you should quit until you get further behind. This is no SE conspiracy to make 75% profit margin or something ridiculous.
lol, well, i do not have a special knowledge of roys profit margins, nor do i need too. and what am i behind on? i simply questioned something. if you have a problem with that...tough man, deal with it this isnt like a competition or anything....ITS A STYLE FORUM.

Originally Posted by Odd I/O

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If they had kept the prices the same then that would have meant a 50% cut in profit to Roy which would make no financial sense.

It makes no sense unless you take into consideration the fact that he will likely sell many more pairs, which makes up for the loss of profit per unit.

That said, the jeans seem to be worth as much as similarly priced jeans.

The simplest answer is that the original price was artificially low. Roy could not afford to devote the time he took to make and sell the jeans for that kind of cash. $275 puts him right in line with other one or two-man band brands (Ooe Yofukuten, Rogue Territory).

At Superdenim, I said (before seeing the jeans) that the only issue I saw was that this puts Roy in direct competition with a lot of Japanese brands. He needed to step his game up to justify the tag - and from what I've seen, he has. There are a lot of interesting and unique details to these jeans.

I just got the Mr. Freedom Californian jeans, but I'm seriously thinking of grabbing a pair of Roys for my work pants.

Originally Posted by NorCal

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I suspect that he figured out that spending that much time on a pair of 150$ jeans = the poor house.

Yea I figured that was partially responsible for the price increase. I don't think Kiya takes the whole difference in the current price of the jeans and the previous price, $125. Well maybe he does after wholesale price for SE.

But I still see how Roy would be charging more for his jeans, it used to be a hobby and he did it on the side as he had a full time metal working job. He is looking at expanding his brand even more in the future to include more than just jeans. He probably wants to eventually leave his full time job and run his brand for a living and the $150 price point probably did not cut it for him.

I won't be buying his jeans as it's out of my price range but I can see his point of view. I really regret missing his deadline in the summer now.

having sid as a model really confuses me sometimes. most cuts look identical on him, and in the case of something like the SEXIH07BK, look absolutely nothing like they do on anyone else who wears them.

the vid is great.

I don't get these jeans along with a lot of the other jeans produced by small labels.
Maybe i'm saturated with raw denim jeans, but these don't offer anything new.

The denim is "the same" cone mill denim used by quite a few other small brands. The model is a completely standard no frills 5 pocket and the cut is not really interesting.

This is just.. generic. Safe. Meh.
He could be making them while jumping on his tongue and it would still just be a pair of jeans in the end.
I guess they were hot when it was just that, a generic but wellmade pair of jeans for 150 usd. Now they are up at 275. I can buy sugar canes for that price!
Made of f'ning sugarcane fibers and dyed with natural indigo!
I could even buy naked and famous jeans with kevlar in it if i felt like i had that need.
Or just something that didn't look like 90% of all jeans coming out at the moment.

On a sidenote:
All you people trying to find a reason for the pricehike while feeling annoyed that 'missed' the first 'pratice' batch?
Pick up your ******* pride. It's probably lying in the bin with your common sense.

Wow..