The process of creating luxurious fur garments starts with selecting the most suitable material. As a manufacturer of fur garments it is in our best interest to purchase raw materials from large auction companies.
What is an auction company?
Fur auction companies are essentially the middleman between the fur farmer and the manufacturers. These companies work hard to aggregate as much fur material as possible. Once they have the material then they must sort and grade it all. Sorting and grading is done mostly by hand using experienced technicians. The goods are split by variety, sex, quality, size, nap, clarity, density, color and more!
The major auction companies each sell multiple times throughout the year but it is always predetermined to help buyers’ schedules.
Once the goods are ready for sale, they are presented to the buyers as show lots in the warehouse of the auction. Here each buyer can take a careful look at the skins they are interested in purchasing. This process is call inspection.
The Sale
After inspection the sale begins. Here all types of global market forces come into play. It is a real auction with an auctioneer in the front of the room along with spotters. The buyers in the room can exceed 700 at any given auction. The spotters and auctioneers must keep a keen eye out for bids. Once the hammer is dropped, whatever you bid for, you bought. Mistakes are not forgiven.
All goods have a price and the auction platform helps establish values for types of goods. Highly desirable skins bring greater prices than less desirable. In years where demand as a whole is low, prices are low. Prices are established through supply and demand. If one buyer really wants specific goods, he must be willing to pay more than anyone else in the room. At each auction, celebratory bundles are selected as top lots. This small amount of skins is considered the best. In a market where normal skins may go for $100, these skins can bring prices of up to $2,000 per skin!
Many manufacturers use professional buyers because buying during an auction requires great discipline and skill. If you let your emotions get the better of you, you may buy more material than you originally intended at prices out of your range, and such a mistake can put you out of business, quickly. The materials purchased by Ego are purchased solely by George & Dino Salagiannis. This gives Ego the total control of the qualities used. Many smaller manufacturers do not have the scale to justify buying directly from auctions, this gives Ego a major advantage over competition.
Origin Assured
Another reason why fur manufacturers should only buy from auctions is because all the material an auction house gathers is Origin Assured. This is important because it gives assurance that the fur product originates from a country where national or local regulations or standards governing fur production are in force.
Using Auctions
Auctions determine the market price of fur. Without auctions prices would fluctuate wildly between each manufacturer. Using auctions lets manufacturers choose what kind of quality they want to work. Fur producers can choose to work poor quality skins which come at low prices or high quality skins which are always more expensive at an auction. Because there are hundreds of professional buyers at any given auction prices for poor material will never be greater than that of higher quality goods. Therefore any retailers that claim to have top quality at unreasonably cheap prices, is not honest. Really good garments are made from really good materials, and really good material costs the most money on the market.