A great resource

This photo shows a small portion of our leather color palette. We get leathers from around the globe, with the majority of our leathers coming from suppliers located in New York City. Living in the wilds of the Tetons, New York isn't exactly convenient, so we rely on phone contacts. For several years we have been working with a nice man at one of New York's largest leather brokerage houses, but we've always had communication difficulties with him due to his thick Spanish accent.

One of the problems with phone conversations is you don't know what other things are going on around the person on the other end of the line. For the past year, dealing with this individual has been increasingly difficult and frustrating, beyond the language problem. Where he used to be very helpful, lately he has been curt and the level of information about what he has available has declined. He'd frequently say, "I'm too busy, call me back." For the last few months, when it came time to call him to order or to request information, we'd feel like drawing straws to see who would get the onerous task of dealing with him this time.

After we failed to get timely information on availability of leather for a special order garment for a customer Fred said, "enough!" and wrote a letter to the owner of the business explaining our difficulties

Yesterday the owner called Fred and apologized for the drop off in service and instructed us to send our orders and information requests directly to him so he'd be able to make sure our account was handled properly. He explained that the man we had been dealing with was really over-worked and had too much on his plate all the time, but he was working on trying to correct the problem.

All of a sudden, leathers that we had been told they didn't have in stock are on a UPS truck heading for our studio. The squeaky wheel...

It is nice to know that our business is valued by the owner and that he is willing to personally take care of what is surely a small account to him compared to the large fashion houses he also supplies. It is no wonder that he offers the largest selection of quality leathers of any of our suppliers. That his business is growing in spite of the huge transportation cost increases and the declining value of the dollar (versus the Euro) which are creating pricing problems for him, and for anyone importing outstanding Spanish and Italian leathers, is a tribute to his business savvy. Being a small business, we like to see good people succeed in business when they try hard. We thank him for his courtesy and for making our business more valuable to our customers because we continue to have good access to the world's finest leathers.