So I was trying to decide what I wanted to do about leather because I can only get certain types of leather as straps and I'm dead set on only using leather from quality tanneries... which means I have to buy sides and they're expensive...
I'll be using Wickett & Craig leather for everything, Herman Oak just has super crazy minimums on leather. I may buy a side of their skirting leather from a reseller to make the stamped collars with though but finding anything other than a tooling type leather is pretty hard and it's all got the reseller's fee stacked on top.
Anyway, I ended up buying latigo leather sides in Black and Brown since I can buy english bridle and harness leather as straps. I also figured to start with I should probably offer some of the more "rugged leathers" and add the prettier ones later if my store does well. And what I mean by rugged is that the latigo is made to really take a beating as far as getting dirty and not being cared for quite so much.
As I said I ordered black and medium brown, but the brown is MUCH darker than the samples they had sent me. I do have some of their nicer English Bridle leather in the medium brown that I can offer on here. I'm thinking it's just much darker because the latigo has a much higher oil content, but I am going to shoot them an email and ask (the leather just showed up today).
I'm also about to head to the bank to send out the money for my hardware order. I decided I'm only going to offer Solid Brass for hardware. I want my collars to be 100% quality, so Solid Brass only. And again, if my store starts doing well than I will start adding options... like nickle or chrome plated solid brass hardware.
Another thing I did forget to add in the calculations was the cost of the conditioner, sealer, and edge dressing I use on the collars. So the cost of a plain 1" collar is going to be more like $20, which I had said $15 for the solid brass.
Lastly, I decided to change my rivets. I have had zero problems with any of the rivets I've set so far... but I have heard stories of the double cap rivets "looking properly set" but coming apart after a bit of force. So to prevent that I'm looking at doing Chicago Screws with the red(super duty) Loctite, I need some more buckles before I can make another collar and make sure I like the Chicago Screws.
Now when it comes to decorations, I am going to place an order of some that I want, but I think I'll post before I place the order so that if someone is looking at buying one of my collars if they want a color or spot that I'm not going to order they have the option of still buying it. To keep this simple, what I'll do is that you would pay for the smallest package size needed for your collar and I'd just keep any extra since these collars are all seriously discounted for what I would sell them for and you're buying a special color/stone/spot.
Ok, so that's my collar update.