Ask him his perspective on the beaver felt supply. Ask if they are experiencing large price increases for the the beaver fibre. Ask his perspective on supply issues going forward. Thank you.
Unfortunately things didn't go quite as planned this time. The person to ask about the supply costs and the outlook for the future is the head of purchasing. She is also my primary contact with whom I schedule my visits, regardless of who I am there to work with on a given day. When I arrived this time, I found out she had just left for a couple of hours to attend to a personal matter, and instead of having her walk me back to the production buildings (which is when I would have been asking about beaver prices), one of the production managers would come get me.
So cool!!Unfortunately things didn't go quite as planned this time. The person to ask about the supply costs and the outlook for the future is the head of purchasing. She is also my primary contact with whom I schedule my visits, regardless of who I am there to work with on a given day. When I arrived this time, I found out she had just left for a couple of hours to attend to a personal matter, and instead of having her walk me back to the production buildings (which is when I would have been asking about beaver prices), one of the production managers would come get me.
I spent a couple hours working with the production manager in the straw building (they make straw hats in one building and felt hats in another). I asked him your questions, but not surprisingly he didn't really know about the costs on the fur side of the company.
I visit them every couple months, and most likely I'll be visiting with purchasing next time and get the answers to your questions.
For anyone reading the thread...Here's a couple of pics of the factory just so I'm not only adding boring words to the Stetson factory video thread.
Some historical original Stetson ledgers..
There's lots of Stetson history and cool old hat stuff there, as one might imagine...
Some of the machines still being used today date back over 100 years.
Here they're applying my gold foil to a leather sweat band.
Here's some of the dies they were using this day for stamping sweatbands.
