Happy 2018!

Happy 2018 to all our wonderful customers! We met so many of you in 2017 at the Pike Place Market and at Issaquah Salmon Days! We hope to see you both places again in 2018! We had fun doing some custom work for the rooms and the Rider restaurant at the beautiful, completely refurbished HOTEL THEODORE (formerly the Roosevelt) and continue to add to our online store. We also want to thank all our wonderful ONLINE STORE customers all over the United States!

Please follow us on Instagram and Facebook which is where we post our most recent up-to-date photos of our newest merchandise and any new designs!

Some changes for 2018:

1. We will be doing wholesale custom work all year long. Please provide resale number and business name/EIN with any inquiries. As of 2018, we are no longer doing retail custom orders.

2. We will be open 6 days a week at the Pike Place Market in January and February. Wednesdays - Mondays. Beginning in March, we will be open 7 days a week. Please always check our Facebook page prior to making a special trip as that's where we post any last-minute days off!

3. We have created a wait-list for out of stock items! If the item you want is sold out, please email shawn@stickmanleather.com to be invoiced when the item is back in stock! (Include your city/state with your inquiry).

Let's Get Social!

FACEBOOK

We love to post pictures of you with your bags on our Facebook page. Feel free to share your pictures with us, too!

We also post in the morning on our Facebook page if we are not going to be at the Pike Place Market for the day. Typically, we're there every day of the week but, things happen. We recently had an elevator down (couldn't get our merchandise upstairs) and a fire under the viaduct (had to close early!) Checking our feed can (hopefully) save you from a drive to Seattle if we aren't there.

INSTAGRAM

Our new items and behind the scenes photos can be found on Instagram. Once in a while, we post pictures of our shop dogs! Ace the Husky is now 6 months old and getting bigger by the day! Or, we'll follow the adventures of the birds that build a nest right outside our shop in the woods! Usually Instagram is the first place to see a new item or our new colors!

LINKS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StickmanLeather/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stickmanleather/

Online store: https://squareup.com/store/stickmanleather

HAPPY 2016!

Happy 2016 to everyone! I was out in the shop bright and early on January 2nd, making bags, that's what I do.

As always, change is inevitable.

• I'm losing my shop assistant, Hillary, in April as she's going off to new adventures. I will be sad to see her go but happy for her, she's been a delight to work with.
• Postal rates have gone up, which means it'll cost you a dollar or two more if you order a bag and have it shipped. 
• I'm pleased with the new designs that I put out late last year, the Tahoma Bag and the Summit Bag. (Eventually, I'll have photos on this website, but for now you can see them on my Facebook page!) I think these bags are going to be permanent parts of the line in 2016. 
• I'm pleased that I am continuing my relationship with Seidel tanning out of Wisconsin they supply me with my custom color -Bark Passport- which is a deep, rich brown. 

I hope that 2016 finds all of my amazing customers happy and well!

Top 3 Must-Haves in a Great Leather Bag

Whether you buy one of my bags, or buy a bag from another craftsperson, these are the three things to look for!

1. Top grain/full grain leather.

A quality bag is made of the best leather, drum dyed so the color won't bleed.

Some manufactured bags are made of leather scraps in a process similar to creating particle board. Honestly, one way to tell is price. If you're out shopping and a leather bag is VERY inexpensive, the leather is either urine-tanned (as gross as it sounds) or made of urethane-coated leather scraps.

2. Nylon Thread

Any other type of thread will either rot or break.

3. Solid cast hardware.

Check for seams. If a buckle or ring has a seam then it will pull apart with use.

For a later post, I'll talk about bags that are pieced together - tip, a bag is more durable, the fewer pieces it is made with! If your strap isn't one continuous piece, it's a dead giveaway.

Work From Home Dad

I'm a work from home Dad. My wife and kids helped me out in the shop this summer, but, now that the kids are off to school, it's me and the wife in the shop! In between working, our daughter had foot surgery and has needed rides to school and help getting to her first class! So, between trips to the doctor, rides to school, making school lunches, curriculum nights and ALL that goes with being a work-from-home-dad; I'm making bags!! This is my busiest time of year as I'm doing my best to build inventory so there's a lot of merchandise for the holidays! If you want a bag for a gift (or you want to buy a bag for a gift) please remember that I buy SMALL lots of leather. If you see a bag you adore, I might not always be able to get that exact leather again. I know that some customers think I'm just trying to make a sale fast when I say that. Then, they come back in a few hours and the bag they loved is gone. And I cannot get any more of that particular leather. It happens nearly EVERY day that I am selling at the market. Moral of the story? If you love it. Buy it. Set it aside for the holidays . . . just trying to make your dreams come true. One bag at a time!

One Guy, Making Bags

I'm just one guy, making bags and selling them at Pike Place Market. In order to keep up, I have to keep things rolling through the shop. I do this by making more than one bag at a time. The other day, it was red Michele Bags. They look kind of cool sitting on my workbench.

A New World

I'm venturing into online sales, I've posted my first item for sale on Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/shop/StickmanLeather