, known for its upholstery leather for private jets and yachts,

Townsend Leather branching out

Townsend Leather Co., known for its upholstery leather for private jets and yachts, is looking to break into the potentially lucrative market for high end women’s leather handbags.

This holiday season will mark the first the company will be selling its Angel canada goose outlet store Collection of hand made leather handbags and its Paradise Collection, which features a patchwork design.

Townsend President Terry Kucel said he’s long considered trying to break into consumer goods and he decided the economic downturn presented an opportunity his company couldn’t pass up.

«Often that’s when the competition is pulling back, so my belief is you do things that’s the opposite of what everybody else is doing,» he said. «I travel internationally and I show our products. We do presentations for the hospitality and interior design industries, aircraft, boating, whatever else. I meet designers who are basically designing beautiful interiors.. and many of them are women and when we show our decorative leathers they say canada goose outlet canada ‘why don’t you make handbags?'»

Townsend has operated for four decades in Johnstown and employs about 140 people. canada goose outlet The company imports steer, goose outlet canada calf and deer hides from Europe and completes canada goose outlet uk sale the complex process of drum dying and finishing of its leathers at its 110,000 square foot plant. The company specializes in high end, complex, value added canada goose clearance sale decorative leathers.

It wasn’t always that way. Kucel canada goose clearance said his family has continually evolved its business in order to survive as an American manufacturer.

«When my dad started in 1969 it was garment leather, then that moved offshore. So then we started making canada goose outlet toronto factory leather for the shoe canada goose coats on sale industry and that moved offshore. Then we started making leather canada goose factory sale for the furniture industry and a lot of that’s gone to China too,» he said. «So, what we’ve done over the years is establish niche markets on the higher end of price and quality. More design driven. We’ve been successful doing that for canada goose outlet shop the last 10 to 20 years, to the point where we’ve built our Townsend Leather brand into a premium leather in the leather industry. Our thinking is if the wealthy consumers know us as a premium brand, can we take that same brand awareness and bring it over to consumer goods and hopefully capture the luxury market.»

Sarah Eckler, Townsend’s vice president of marketing, said the company’s first consumer handbags were designed by a woman from Gloversville named Terry Brindle. Brindle was a breast cancer survivor who died from ovarian cancer Sept. 30 after battling it for nearly six years.

Brindle’s angel design, which she drew, sculpted and painted, hangs from each bag on a decorative embossed leather tag. uk canada goose outlet The handbags sell for $200 to $300 and $25 from each sale is donated to cancer research at canada goose outlet the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in Brindle’s honor. Brindle participated in an ovarian cancer clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2008. The Web site is the preliminary version of what the company plans to turn into an online official canada goose outlet retail store for its consumer products line.

«Right now we don’t have a distribution network and we had hoped we’d have a little more time with Terry canada goose uk outlet before we were ready to launch. With her passing everyone https://www.baertakreation.de was just so interested in the bags we started selling them locally,» Eckler said. «We’re not a retail outlet but we’ve Canada Goose Coats On Sale canada goose outlet nyc set canada goose jacket outlet up a makeshift area where people come in and look at the bags. We’re developing a high end Web site that will be up by Thanksgiving. Most of them will be sold online.»

The Townsend handbags are actually cut and sown together by Leatherworks, a small four man company in Fall River, Mass. Leatherworks owner Frank Clegg said the Townsend bags are the only leather products he works with that are designed by the company that manufactures the leather, which he thinks gives them a competitive advantage.

«They’re coming from a background where they understand the leather, so that makes it very easy for them to decide the kind of leather they want to use,» he said. «They do a canada goose outlet lot of specialty type leather. They do a lot of tipping and printed leathers that are very interesting. They can design anything they like and they’re doing it now with a few of the pieces, actually designing the leather to be stamped for the item, which I haven’t seen too much of. They actually canada goose outlet parka design the front and the back of the leather specifically for the bag.»

Eckler said Townsend Leather’s expertise with canada goose finishing leather gives it flexibility to respond to the customer.

«We got a lot of feedback on the Terry Tote. We’ve made it in brown and everyone wants it in black, so we’re doing some samples of it in black,» she said.

Kucel said it’s part of his company’s strategy to slowly begin to produce high end consumer leather goods across a range of products over the next 10 to 20 years. He said as more products are produced, Townsend will likely contract with more companies like Leatherworks to handle the increase and eventually he could see the products being mass produced overseas, although the finishing work would remain in Johnstown. He said if the TL Townsend Leather brand becomes popular it could result in increased employment in Johnstown.

«Longer term it’s difficult to manufacture in America, so our strategy is to build a consumer brand so rather than having a few thousand customers we can have millions of customers, so our risk is a little bit levered out by the number of people we’re selling to,» Kucel said.