The Christmas season both this year and last is a wonderful time to find bargains.

Even if you’re not looking to buy gifts for someone, many items that you would ordinarily buy for yourself can be had at healthy discounts.

A relatively new technique by restaurants to boost business is discounted gift cards.

I receive numerous email as well as “snail” mail advertisements to buy $100.00 gift card for $75.00 or $80.00. If it’s from a restaurant that we frequent, or want to try, we often will buy it. If it takes too long to use up the $100.00 (not hard to do where I live unfortunately), we’ll go with another couple and share the bargain.

Yesterday, looking at frozen turkey’s for only 39 cts/lb, or about $5.00-$6.00 for 12-13 lbs. of meat, we bought a few to put away in the freezer (tough to eat one now after Thanksgiving which is why the supermarket wanted to unload them)

So as stated above, it’s a buyers market for some on the consumer side. However, this is not the case on the commodity side. To the surprise of many, hide prices continue to rise in North America and elsewhere.

If you’re a tanner, there are no such things as gift cards or two for the price of one. All you can do is close your eyes and hope that you will eventually be able to garner price increases of 10-30 cts/sq ft from your customer in order to have a chance to earn a profit.

In some cases, an increase in your leather selling price is just to keep your drums turning with chrome and not red ink.

Although it’s too early to see how retail sales for leather products were over this first major holiday shopping week end of the Christmas season, over-all sales were quite good.

We would think that if other items on the retail shelves moved well, that shoes and leather accessories, and to some degree even furniture sales, did so too.

This is what it will take: better business at retail, for new orders and for better prices to the brands who sell to the stores. Without this, leather prices won’t improve and sooner or later, hide prices will have to reverse their current direction.

 

 

 

A few reviews

 

Like most other Americans, we celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. Unlike most American men at least, I was not able to watch Television and immerse myself in the traditional holiday football games.

This was by chance and not by choice. Why does the TV always break on a long weekend when we have time to watch shows we want to see? Unlike most people, we’ve only have one TV set, so we were set free from the electronic hypnotist that on occasion, offers some entertainment.

Speaking of TV, while on the treadmill (chasing the run away hide market!) I watched a town hall question and answer session on CNBC held with graduate students at Columbia University.

The guests were Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and the students asked them questions. It was a great show (and made the treadmill work out fly by) as these two giants of American Commerce talked about this years economic problems and their shared optimism for the future of the country as well as the world.

The show will likely be aired numerous times so if you can find it, would recommend it

Don's rating: A

To my delight, the woman who I have fallen in love with, and to whom I am now engaged put on a magnificent dinner for 22 of our friends and mostly family. She cooked the traditional and obligatory turkey in a Reynolds Oven bag of some sort.

The result was a very juicy and delicious bird enjoyed by all. She also bought a butterball brand that cost about 3 times the regular price but is somehow injected with butter. Butter is always better!

My cousin and his wife bought about 5 delicious pies and my sister-in-law to be made bourbon soaked pecan pie. Not bad. A friend did some great magic tricks and two of us regaled the assembled with jokes. All in all a great day.

Don rating  A+!

Almost by impulse Wednesday, I bought a bottle of an Italian Sangiovese DiMajo Norante 07. Italian wines are often better value than French or California wines but usually better than an Argentine Malbec which are also good value, but not quite as good as this one was.

I only paid $10.99 at an upscale market so it’s probably available for less at a place like Cosco if you can find it. Highly recommend it and an excellent wine for the price if you like a dry and smooth taste that goes well with Turkey, stuffing and all the works. Even good with the pie! I’m going to buy some more tomorrow.

Don rating: B+

After feasting on left over turkey (this might last for days as there’s an awful lot of it left over) and since there was no television we went to see a movie called The Education. Here’s the outline put out by the movie producers.

“It's 1961 and attractive, bright 16-year-old schoolgirl, Jenny is poised on the brink of womanhood. Stifled by the tedium of adolescent routine, Jenny can't wait for adult life to begin. One rainy day, her suburban life is upended by the arrival of an unsuitable suitor, 30- ish David. Urbane and witty, David introduces Jenny to a glittering new world of classical concerts and late-night suppers. Just as the family's long-held dream of getting their brilliant daughter into Oxford seems within reach, Jenny is tempted by another kind of life. Will David be the making of Jenny or her undoing?”

 

I won’t tell you the ending (unless you ask me) but the movie has a powerful lesson for any adolescent girl or for that matter boy and if for that reason alone, I would recommend it.

 

Don rating: B

 

This afternoon, it was close to 80 in sunny Phoenix so I took advantage by puffing one of my more favorite cigars. It’s a Casada natural Churchill. A little on the light side but still good taste and adequate body. Costs about $5.00-$6.00

 

Dons rating: B

 

Tomorrow night we’re going to see Capital Steps. A live group of 4-6 people, who produce very funny satirical “shticks”, set to music, of life amongst the political set in our nations capital.

 

I’ve seen it many times but each year it’s different as the characters change. This year, I would expect to see take off’s on Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Hillary and they always do Bill Clinton

 

If/when it comes to where you live I would recommend it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

                        

Time-shares are a great buy – if you’re the guy selling them.

Fat commissions are earned for salespeople standing around beautiful properties handing out free goodies just for listening to their pitch.

Time-shares are a terrible buy – if you’re the guy buying them!

I was one of those victims, suckers, patsy’s or whatever you want to call it 7 years ago.  My family has been going to Maui for more than 25 years at Christmas time.We always stayed at the Marriott Hotel. In 2000, they decided to cash in and converted it to a Time Share property.
 

We were afraid that if we didn’t buy it, we would not be able to share our holiday with the many friends who always came back at the same time each year.

I was also thinking that rates were going higher worldwide and for sure in Hawaii. Property values were exploding everyplace and as the smooth salesmen said “it’s a good investment that your family can enjoy for evermore.”

Hah!  The joke’s been on me.  The maintenance charges have gone up from $900/week in 2002 to $1500 this year. That’s a little over $200/night. Forget the interest or whatever I could have gotten on the money I had “invested” in the property.

If it’s any consolation, I am not the only pigeon. Millions of time-share weeks have been sold over the years around the world.

There are so many weeks where the owners want to sell them, or rent them or swap them that there’s an abundance of properties that anyone can rent or buy.

They typically can be rented for the same as or sometimes even less than the maintenance cost.

We wanted an extra week this year, and we found one at the nearby Westin Villas for $1400 including taxes, which are major in Hawaii. We found it on Craig’s List of all places.

There’s another site called Redweek.com that has Marriott owners looking to rent when they can’t show up for their own committed weeks. There were even a few cheap offerings on Ebay.

Want to buy a time-share? Compared to their original cost, you can steal them from various sellers. It’s almost like foreclosed houses.

I can only caution anyone who is tempted by a nice dinner or an adventure cruise, helicopter ride, etc just for showing up for the property tour and hearing the time share pitch.

The sales people are very very good. If you have lots of will power, take the freebee, but remember, “foretold is forewarned!”

 

 

We are all besieged every time we open our email with various stories passed on from friends. Sometimes it’s about how the world is going to blow up if we don’t do something.

Some times the friendly “alert” is that the sky is going to fall or that by eating or not eating this or that is crucial to our survival.

More often than not it’s politically orientated misinformation and supposed “facts” which are typically distorted, or don’t even have any truth to them.

This week I received a caution about the harms of drinking coca cola. It was titled coke or water. A friend in Europe forwarded it on to me.

I thought it was pretty interesting and a little scary as I consume about 4-5 cans of diet coke myself every week. I passed this email on to several friends one of whom happens to be the smartest guy I know.

He wrote me back disproving all of the dangers of coke and now I can go on happily consuming this drink (while knowing that water would still be better for me).

I also was sent an email recently showing George Bush making a speech somewhere saying things about the Iranians and others. He was using language more often found in a hide house than the UN General assembly.

By looking closely, I could see that somehow someone had literally put the words in his mouth.

In other words, don’t believe everything you hear or read and sometimes even see. Look at the re-plays on football.

My smart cousin often uses snopes.com. A very interesting website that takes the sizzle out of fallacious emails as well as news stories that quite often contain, misleading information.

This is a very personal blog today, but it is also the occasion of a very special event in my life.

I became engaged to be married and to say the least, I am extremely happy about it.

We opened a bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon to celebrate. We had it with a romantic lunch of left over steak at home and it was delicious as is the women I will marry in the spring.

Since we have just finished the bottle, if this blog is not too coherent, please understand!

 

 

                                                 

Steer prices are now within 10% of the markets peak last August.  Prices fell in the ensuing months and matched current prices during the same week in 2009.

Subsequently, the declines came at a rapid pace with unparalleled consequences as anyone who reads Hidenet is all to well aware.

External factors played a big part, as it always done, in hide prices. Namely, last year it could be attributed to waves of cancellations of leather (and all products) by retailers, which backed up the supply chain all the way to the packer.

All signs at the moment look for further price increases this week and quite possibly next as well. Beyond that, the upward trend remains to be seen.

I attribute this to retailers re-stocking depleted inventories due to the signs of more consumer activity. Their view is based on increases in GDP or GNP and a better over-all feeling of confidence.

More stories are being heard of higher leather prices, not only in China, which is enjoying very good demand but here as well.

One caveat is upholstery. Unless the world economy booms over night, it’s going to be a very long time before automotive leather business is going to significantly increase except perhaps in China. New home sales, a leading indicator of leather upholstery sales are not about to increase rapidly either. Just one set of seating uses up far more leather than even a pair of women’s boots

So will this time be different? Are we on the precipice of another turn around and crash?

Given the improvement in the US economy, not to mention other countries, I don’t think we’re in for any kind of major correction in hide prices. Demand, with small peaks and valley’s, should be able to equal, if not continue, to surpass supply for quite sometime to come.

Bottom line: No time to be scared. I would really be surprised to see any repeat of last year’s crash. 

Someone once said that commissioned hide agents were nothing but “barnacles on a boat,” implying that they serve no function helpful to the ship. And, so goes the analogy, those barnacles need to be removed as part of the ship’s maintenance.

I don’t have much compassion for barnacles, although I think they have some sort of symbiotic relationship with whales where they DO, in fact, serve some kind of cleaning function while they eat foreign matter off of the whale’s skin. Did I make that up?

I do have compassion, however, for commissioned hide agents, having worked most of my career as an intermediary in the hide business. However, acting as a principal where we actually bought hides, took possession and re-sold them, is not the same as simply putting buyer and seller together and investing no money in the trade. A pure agent is not a risk-taker or speculator or owner and this is the main scorn agents face. After all (goes the argument) if seller “A” invoices buyer “B” time after time, who needs the agent? Hmm. Is he just a “barnacle?”

Perhaps the proof is in the reality of hide trading today. Do hide agents still exist? Yes. There are less of them than there were 20 or 30 years ago, essentially for the same reasons as outlined above. Some say the decline has more to do with the fact that there are far fewer abattoirs to tend to and fewer tanneries to sell hides to, as well. And, over time, the cutthroat practice of going direct is certainly taking its toll on agency business.

The point is, however, that, globally today, there are still hundreds of commissioned hide agents. I doubt, too, that their suppliers and customers haven’t figured out that they could, if they wanted to, cut out the agent and save lots of money. But they don’t do so. They understand that the role of an agent is far more than to be a blood sucker in the middle of a deal.

Agents often live half way around the world so they can operate, buying or selling for their connections while the other party sleeps. They speak the native language as well as the language of the guy at the other end of the trade, too. I certainly don’t want to have to call 15 or 20 Chinese tanners in the middle of the night to try to sell hides in Mandarin. I will shave and save a bit for my Chinese agent.

Although some agents are correctly labeled as “tanners’ agents”, most of those types are no longer in the business. Suppliers pick up on that and dump them as soon as possible. Most agents today develop a trust with both supplier and customer through an objective viewpoint on issues ranging from quality claims to the decision whether or not to even sell to a tanner who is not financially viable. Suppliers cannot always know the whole story and they rely on a good agent to manage the flow of sales. The same applies to shipments and payments, too.

I was impressed when I was in Bologna a few weeks ago at Lineapelle when I chatted with a few Italian hide sales agents. Given the precarious situation in Italy right now, they each independently told me how concerned they are about who they approach to sell hides to. They don’t want grief from their suppliers if something goes bad, but they truly are looking out for everyone’s good. They are looking beyond making a quick buck selling a shaky account and quietly hoping the deal goes through.

These are not rookie sales agents. These are real pros. They understand that their livelihood depends on representing the best interests of both parties. That is why they are still in business.

Craig Roalson (editor)

Hidenet.com