Is this the end of special order cloth?

[Jock Scot]

As Paul rightly says, bills have to be paid by us all and Dalgliesh are no exception, however it does cause me to wonder, as the price increase is substantial, if a price hike should have happened a long time ago and perhaps in more gentle stages to ease the pain to the customers. Academic really, but those all important customers are vital for the future of any business and sudden major price rises cannot help, however necessary they might be.

[xman]

Time to dig out my old loom perhaps .

Please, sir!

[CDNSushi]

Well this is bad new for me. Unfortunately there are not that many kilt wearers out there of Czech heritage to make MM an option for my Czech National Tartan. I only know one other person who is a member on this forum and already has kilt in CzN.

Yes and no. It's like anything else -- you probably have to be patient and try to drum up interest among others to go in on a larger order to help distribute the setup cost. For the Czech tartan in particular, the guy to contact would be the designer, Vaclav Rout, who also runs the Czech kilt website http://skotsko.net/. (He's shown his face here on XMTS a couple times to say hello, but isn't an active member).

At some point I would also like to have a kilt in the Czech tartan, but that will be a long time in the future, as expense-wise, I won't be able to afford it for a good number of years to come. But if you live in the U.S. you may want to contact some of the Czech cultural organizations to see if there would be any interest there. If I were in your shoes, I'd start with people in places like Wilbur, Nebraska (http://www.nebraskaczechs.org/), Chicago (http://www.chicago-cz.com/english/), or Cedar Rapids, Iowa (http://www.ncsml.org/) all of which have sizable Czech communities.

[madmacs]

While I know Nick is doing what he has to in order to turn the mill around, he has an uphill struggle against the mills like locharron and marton mills.

Is he pricing them out of the market? I believe there was a price jump after they were taken over, and now there's a set up charge too... Market realities are that a kilt is a luxury item, people who want a custom run will still buy, they may not buy a standard tartan available elsewhere, I know locharron dont make the weathered maclean hunting anymore, so if i want it i'll have to consider them... Or not get it.

I worry more for the kiltmakers... While some might be able to absorb part of the increase, it's probably not.something they can do multiple times...

Oh well PV next time for me then... but only because I need washable...

[Spartan Tartan]

The price adjustment occurred sometime last summer, if I am not mistaken. Nick posted a pretty good explanation at the time and did suggest that the setup fee adjustment was well over due!

I was very fortunate at that time that I had just placed an order just prior to the change. In the end, I'd have paid the set up fee adjusted at the time to get the treasured and sewn I was then awaiting. However, future orders will be strongly considered if I again choose the custome weave route. Sadly, some of us do not have widely available tartans. Then again, I rather enjoy my unique custome woven kilts.

[unixken]

Ah, the economies of scale. A mill will run large quantities of what sells readily (which I suspect is just a few dozen of the more common tartans, usually in "modern colors"), and leave all else to special order runs. And the larger the run, the more any setup costs can be amortized out over the greater number of yards produced.

I paid about $450 a few months ago for a wonderful 8-yard traditional, in Buchanan Modern. I'm hoping to one day purchase another of the same kilt, but in the muted colors of Buchanan Reproduction. It's a given that my fabric will be produced as part of a limited run. At current prices, that 8 yard tank, in Buchanan Reproduction, is priced at just under $1000. I'm just going to have to save those pennies. I really want that kilt one day.

[O'Callaghan]

Fortunately for me at least, since the changes in ownership (Scotweb and Dalgliesh now being commonly owned), Scotweb now list Callaghan as a stock tartan, which no-one else does AFAIK. I checked just now to make sure they still list it, and they now list Callaghan Ancient too. I actually prefer Modern, even though it's very dark. Not much help if you need something more obscure I know, but good luck finding any Irish family name tartans elsewhere.

[Paul Henry]

Fortunately for me at least, since the changes in ownership (Scotweb and Dalgliesh now being commonly owned), Scotweb now list Callaghan as a stock tartan, which no-one else does AFAIK. I checked just now to make sure they still list it, and they now list Callaghan Ancient too. I actually prefer Modern, even though it's very dark. Not much help if you need something more obscure I know, but good luck finding any Irish family name tartans elsewhere.

I don't think they do list it as "stock" but rather as available as custom woven, this is one of the little quirks with the new DC Dalgleish tartan viewer,with the clever software they use , you can see what the ancient/modern/reproduction would roughly look like , but they are only usually computer generated images, not actual cloth samples,and as such they would still attract the extra charges for a set up, although on their website they have included this extra in the retail price list for ease of use, just compare the prices for one of their actual stock tartans against the price of the Callaghan - the stock ones are about half the cost of the specials.

[figheadair]

Ah, the economies of scale. A mill will run large quantities of what sells readily (which I suspect is just a few dozen of the more common tartans, usually in "modern colors"), and leave all else to special order runs. And the larger the run, the more any setup costs can be amortized out over the greater number of yards produced.

I've been thinking about this overnight and am still economically confused. There is no set-up cost factored into a 'stock' tartan but from an economic perspective 'stock' items by their very nature an unrealised asset until sold. If I order a full piece in 'stock' colours (i.e. no special dyeing required) then the whole length is purchased immediately meaning an immediate full profit. So why should that be subject to a set-up cost? Consider also that in some circumstances where the order is for an historical sett/technique that I will have to do the calculation to fit the pattern to the loom (offset cloth is a prime example). Perhaps I should then counter charge for my expertise? An interesting conundrum!

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I noticed it as well, and I completely understand the set up costs need to be accounted for , but it is a substantial rise, and certainly for my kilts which are usually 8 yards it may well be out of hte reach of some of my customers, we shall see, I can make a little less perhaps, because I would like the orders but I still need to pay bills!
One point to note was that the price rise was dated a few days before they notified their customers, so that i had no chance to speculatively order some cloth, and indeed if I had had a client in the middle of a decision process I would have had a problem....

That was a problem with me, as it turns out, as the price increase was announced immediately after their two week holiday. As it happened, I took a few kilt orders during that mill holiday; I gave price quotes and collected payment based on the former prices, but will have to pay for the cloth myself with the new pricing. Sigh. It happens.