I need to admit something to you. My supplier retired last year and I am running very low on deer hides. I have a bit of buffalo hide left. I need to locate a new supplier I like/trust and the other issue is that the deer hides I use are the winter coats (long hair) so even if I find one by mid/late summer, it won't be till winter I can even hope to get properly tanned hides. Since I try to mkae the more popular attachments in advance and store them, I am going to be running out of some before fall/winter. The lack of this long time supplier affects all my deer hair, buffalo hair, elk hair, deer leather and buffalo leather toys. Only things it does not affect are my wands, ribbon attachments and a few other things. I may look at the possibility of making more wool toys soon to have a fallback.
Also, sorry prices have been jumping on my toys. I was slowly raising prices to keep up with my inflation costs (the last hides cost me a good amount more) and now the post office and ups imposed like an 8 to 15% "temp" increase to account for fuel costs and 1 single padded envelope is now costing me like $6 to $7 to ship to the eat coast, not accoutning for my material increases as all the inflation hit and fuel prices went up, so my supplies jumped big time. I am not happy with this all, I used to be able to sell a single attachment for $8.99 many many years ago and make 50 cents to $2 depending on the order, but not now. I am trying to move all the attachments up to between 11.99 and 12.99 now to get back to my profit level again (I am actually losing on a few and when I sell one and realize this I up it). Sorry. :(
I'll admit, even though i hope to secure a new supplier this summer, the clock is counting down to when I'll stop making the hair attachments myself cause I have arthritis in one arm (not too bad), a trigger finger and dupuytren's contracture in the other handindex finder, so the more intricate things become harder. But I do not want to stop at all for now and I can get people to help me make them, but as soon as I get people to help, it is no longer handmade by ME and thus some things will have to come off Etsy to keep in line with their rules. :/ And new toys (wool and such) still take me a while to come out with because I have to make them and test them with my cat and then shelter cats and make sure they are fun and hold up, so new ones will be at leasr 6 to 8 months till I start to come out with them.
For now there is not a worry, but just thought I needed to let ya know.
David and the CoolCyberCats
Forever in my heart
Cats Nap. Only Humans Put Them "To Sleep": Sterilize, Don't Euthanize!