A Trade Secret

Here's Rita with a happy new coat owner!

We were in Park City, UT for the Kimball Art Center's really big Festival of the Arts last weekend. This show is the most amazing show we do all year, from a sponsoring organization's logistics point of view. Several blocks of Main Street (the heart of old Park City) are blocked off to traffic for three days, most alleys and side streets are fenced off to control admission to the festival, parking for thousands of cars in out-lying lots is secured and dozens of buses run on time at mere five minute intervals to transport the 40-50,000 festival visitors to and from Main Street. Police and hundreds of volunteers keep the city and festival running with very few glitches over the long weekend. We're reminded of a major military operation.

This year the weather was spectacular summer sunshine and NO RAIN! We saw many happy customer from previous years and made new friends and customers to look forward to seeing again next year.

One old friend stopped who by to say hello is the vice-president of Overland Sheepskins and Leather, a national retailer of men's and women's shearling and leather garments with 13 stores from Vermont to California. We had been noticing that Overland, like most other shearling and leather stores, has been carrying ever higher percentages of non-American made products. Our friend informed us that they were lately finding that their customers were preferring to buy the American made goods they still carried, over the cheaper imports, so they were trying to shift their inventory to reflect this trend. Music to our ears.

He also told us that he was very frustrated with his foreign leather manufactures. It seems that they are constantly trying to save money by trimming their pattern pieces smaller and smaller to save on material costs. This obviously changes the sizes and the fit of the garments they send him- much to his consternation.

So, if you ever have wondered why something you bought fits "funny", or if you had to go up a size, it might merely be a "trade secret" of higher profits for the off-shore manufacturer.

We arrived home at 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning, and will be leaving at 4:00 a.m. Thursday morning for our next show in Sun Valley, so we're really cramped for time to restock and get ready. Days off? What are those?

Here's Rita assisting more clients in Park City.