I would send my fur to a US auction house. I never have sent anything north and don't plan on it.

Canada wont let buyers in. The U.S. issued warrants for a bunch of them the last time we had one.

The only way it would work is electronic in person bidding. Nobody able to see who is bidding. No colluding would mean no warrants.

No holding back fur. It sells for whatever is high bid. In todays market there is no way it would fly any other way. Holding fur is costly.

No loans. If you can't put together the funds you need to see you through your season, then you need a new plan.

No holding 16 auctions and "private treaty" in between. One auction. Same week every year. Like the second full week of May.

All fur gets a bar code. Graders have no clue where the the skin came from. Some WI fur will get sold in a lot with TX fur and vice versa.

After that comes the hard stuff. Employees, warehouse, auction room etc.

take some experienced business people to get it going

Only one auction per year? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

All pelts except for rats, ermine and squirrels already get a bar code. Graders have no idea where the pelts are from - unless they are bobcats or otter.

I had a similar thought but I envisioned it as more of a co-op. Possibly ran in conjunction with the National and State associations. The New York State Fair Grounds would be a suitable place to hold such an auction. It's got the space, there are still some big buyers in the North East.


WHAT IS A COOPERATIVE?
The International Co-Operative Alliance defines a cooperative, or co-op, as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise.” In other words, cooperatives are created by people who have a specific need and who are willing to work together to operate and organize a company that will meet that need

in order to have an auction it has to make money. what they are doing now aint working. fur harvesters is struggling. nafa tipped over. needs a different business model

FHA has exclusive contracts to auction fur from several fur marketing co-operatives.

The western US sales dont want the crap eastern and southern fur, so you can count em out of your plan.

How about a crap southern and eastern fur sale in kentucky, then a big bonfire at the end.

I figure at least two auctions, possibly three. Lots of buyers need fur before the seasons are over. For that matter lots of trappers and hunters skin their fur and throw it in the freezer and put up when the season is over. You can catch more if you are putting your time in on the line instead of being stuck in the fur shed. NAFA and FHA both had slightly later recieving dates to try and get that fur shipped and on auction. I know they have both played with recieving dates at times, attempting to make a last recieving date earlier than some of the Association sales, so people couldn't take their fur to a local auction and sell it if they were happy with the price and only if they weren't happy there send it north. I know that the first time I sent any Fur to FHA it was because they had a later recieving date than NAFA and I didn't have time to get all my fur put up for NAFA. I sent fur to them a couple times since for the same reason, they tended to have a later recieving date. But buyers want to buy fur when they need it. If you only offer one auction a year they are going to go someplace else where they can get a bunch of coyotes in January if they need them, rather than waiting until June.

I don't think strictly selling for whatever is high bid is a great idea. I think you'll lose too many shippers. If the auction house doesn't have long term storage facilities, you might offer something like association sales do. Buyer puts a minimum bid on skins and if they don't sell for that he pays a percentage of that and either picks them up or pays shipping to have them shipped back. Possibly say you can only minimum bid skins if you are there in person (wouldn't work well for an International or even National sale, but I know our state sale does that and we have skins shipped in from New York, Texas and all over. But they have the option of not selling only if they are there to turn down the bids and pick up the fur). Most people will sell for whatever high bid is, but this will keep buyers from colluding and giving absolute lowball offers, knowing the furs will sell no matter what.

Absolutely on the no loans. I had been offered "draws" from NAFA on furs I shipped in. I don't think that was good business practice, but allowing buyers to leave with furs that they had won but hadn't paid for (and had the checks clear) was much worse. No fur leaves until it is paid for either in cash, money order or certified check. Or if business checks are accepted, not until after they have cleared the bank.

Yes, fur should be graded on its quality, not where it came from. A good grader can tell you where it came from 90% of the time, but it shouldn't be marked on the fur (obviously anything that is CITES tagged is going to be marked where it is from).

I think it can be done and successfully. Getting it off the ground the first couple years and getting the confidence of the sellers first and then the buyers would be the tough part. Got to have the confidence of the sellers, so they'll send you their fur, and the first year or two that is going to be tough. If there is enough fur there the buyers will show up. You're going to have to be honest to the sellers and gain their confidence, and you're going to have to be honest to the buyers, if you tell them you have X number of coyotes, Y marten and Z bobcats and they show up and you only have half that, they may not bother to show up at the next sale, even if you have three times the furs they aren't going to believe you do.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. There is crap southern and eastern fur sent to our ITA sale, just if they aren't there in person to pick their fur up it is sold for whatever is bid on it, no minimums. It certainly makes my Furs look nice compared to that junk And really Colorado and Idaho bobcats may compete against each other, but we aren't competing with those South Texas bobcats any more than we are competing with nutria. Different products, but you get a buyer who has a furrier who wants about fifty southern cats, some nice beaver and some real nice pale coyotes he is going to try and go to a sale where he can pick up all those, instead of having to drive all over the country. If he has some other furriers that want some good western cats, some lynx and red fox, maybe a few coons and a pile of rats. Well he isn't going to pick all that up at a regional only sale. Right now his options are FHA, Groeny's, or traveling to a bunch of different sales, maybe he can find most of it at a regional sale that allows furs shipped in from everywhere, but chances are not all of it.

Kind of like my idea of moving the next FHA to ND getting shot down. Unbelievable. MD

Luxottica holds 80% of the eyeglass manufacturing and distribution in the US. Therefore they are able to capitalize the market..

If every trapper, predator hunter, fur rancher and road kill picker upper in the U.S. banned together the resulting co-op would be the Luxottica of the fur industry.

Or we can sit by and talk junk about the quality of fur from different sections and keep giving away fur to "private treaty" sales.

1. you would have to be a crook

2. you would have to have 10's of millions of dollars to get started

3 you would have to crawl in bed with the devil (mink ranchers)

Plus you know well as i do NAFA didn't give a crap about wild fur, their money was ranch mink and now that those are in the toilet you can't generate enough off them to have a flea market out back to sell the crappy wild fur at.

NAFA was like a Mercedes dealer ship with a use VW beetle lot out back, 100's come to buy a Mercedes so you advertise you have 100's of buyer to look at your rusted out VW which will get you the best price for it ANYWHERE when the fact is maybe 1 or 2 people that visit the Mercedes dealership even bother to walk around and see what's out back.

IF ranch mink go through the roof you might find someone to jump on that bandwagon again. Wild fur pretty much is dead in the water, in a few years when Canada goose stops buying wild fur the coyote market will be gone with the rest of it.

In the meantime keep sending in those .50 coons.

I would just as soon every state trappers association put on a sale or two. The states that are having them are doing pretty well, and prices are about the same as what FHA has been getting. It creates some revenue for the associations and give people a reason to be a member.

At the current prices I suspect it would be tough to make a profit or even cover operating expenses........but maybe.

I'm guessing there's some regulatory nonsense that's prevented somethinike this from already being done.

Probably a mandatory auction education course taught by Herman Jansen.

Required diversity training for all the graders...............colors and sizes ya know

Historically the fur trade has built several fortunes. Mostly on the trader side. As opposed to production side.

Seattle used to have a fur exchange what ever happened to that company?

Bought by the mink growers and most of us quit shipping to them immediately thereafter. A "regrading " of goods already graded didn't sit well with most of us.

Don't know whether they are still in business.


I did business with Ted Pappas at Western Canadian after that until he passed away.