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fur trade industry

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 8 months ago

 

Adventures in the Skin Trade

 

 

Fur is one of the world's oldest businesses. Today it's a thriving global network.

Months before an animal fur appears on the head of a Russian oil baron or as a chin-caressing collar on a Manhattan socialite, it makes a global journey that may include a stop in a nondescript warehouse in Toronto. Inside the North American Fur Auction, a reeking 15,000-square-foot mausoleum, white-coated dealers from around the world pick among the 5.5 million stiff pelts--lynx, bobcat, mink, muskrat, fox, beaver and timber wolf among them. The floor is slick with oil; a system of ceiling humidifiers keeps the furs moist and the air freezing.

 

The fur trade was one of the first commercial networks of the New World. European explorers swapped axes, muskets and ammunition for pelts from Native Americans. The Fur Auction got its start in 1670 as the Hudson's Bay Company, which bought furs from trappers and shipped them to London. Swelling demand pushed trappers farther west, cutting new trade routes, expanding a young nation's borders and creating the first American multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor.

 

Today the Fur Auction is the North American hub of a highly fragmented worldwide business that pulls in $13.5 billion a year in retail sales. (The U.S. accounts for $1.8 billion of that, most of it from mink sales; 55% of the customers are under 44 years old.) The fur trade employs 1 million-plus people and 117,000 different enterprises. A fox trapped in northern Michigan can travel to five different countries before reaching its final owner as a garment or accessory. Its second stop is an auction house. Copenhagen operates the world's largest, by volume, selling 16 million skins a year; but you can also bid on pelt lots in Helsinki, Oslo and St. Petersburg, Russia. Once bought, skins cross a second border to a dressing and dyeing company where they're washed and conditioned. A manufacturer cuts and assembles the furs into finished goods and moves them through distributors to a retailer--a specialty shop, department store or fashion boutique.

 

Roughly 85% of all furs start out as farmed animals on unmarked plots of land, often to avoid the attention of animal rights activists. (Farming started as a U.S. practice in the 19th century.)

 

Ranchers, most of them in northern Europe and North America, breed mink, foxes and chinchillas for consistency of color and texture. The remaining pelt supply comes the old-fashioned way: The U.S. has 150,000-plus pro and part-time fur hunters, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, who pursue the likes of muskrats, beavers, raccoons, bobcats and, to a lesser extent, foxes, coyotes and mink--all under strict state regulation. Some game, like coyotes and bears, are shot. Most meet their end in traps, which must comply with international humane standards, based on "time to death"--how long it takes an animal to die. "We came up with a computer-generated model," says Robert McQuay of the North American Fur Auction, a tad coldly. That way, he adds, "animals don't need to be tested."

 

Farmers and trappers prepare skins by scraping off the fat, then stretching and drying the pelts. Then they're off to an auction house, sometimes via middlemen known as "country buyers." Bulk sales take place several times a year, but the most important auction is in February, when animals have their thickest coats. Once the furs arrive at the house they're spun in a vat to fluff the coat, then ticketed, sorted by species, rated by color and quality and divided into lots, some as large as 250 pelts. At the Fur Auction, graders remove a few representative pelts from each lot for display. Many bidders are brokers like Sotiris Vogiatzis, a 43-year-old skin dealer from Kastori??, Greece. "I buy mostly [farmed] minks, but I really love wilds," he says. This year he bought 70% of his skins at North American Fur Auction's February sale, where he spent $5 million.

 

 

Next is a stopover at a dressing and dyeing company in the U.S., Canada, China, Russia, Europe or one of the Baltic states. There the skins are soaked in a chemical bath to soften the leather, and the fur is greased and "finished"--meaning, bleached, dyed or toned, depending on use and fashion trends. Dressing is expensive because of the process time involved (up to two or three weeks) and the cost of complying with ever-tightening environmental regulations for such things as chemical disposal. Example: For a black mink coat, Eugene Podolsky, a 27-year-old Ukrainian skin broker, will spend $120 to dress the 40 female pelts. It may not sound like much, since the untreated furs cost him $2,200 at auction. But add in $200 for manufacturing plus another $200 for delivery charges, and his profits start to shrink.

 

Where do most furs get made into coats, hats, collars, mukluks and various linings? Two of the world's biggest clusters of manufacturers are in northern Greece and southern China, where pelts are cut and assembled into garments and accessories, often in family-run businesses. Kastori?? and nearby Si??tista represent the leading manufacturing center for Europe, employing 4,000 Greek businesses. Plants in Guangdong Province, most of them owned by Hong Kong businesses, turn roughly 60% of all fur into products. Hong Kong itself is the globe's largest importer of farmed pelts and exports more garments than anyone.

 

Not long ago Americans, Italians and Germans bought more fur goods than anyone. Today they've been overtaken by Russian and Chinese consumers, who demand luxury goods from designer boutiques but also cheaper ware available in department stores and specialty fur shops.

 

Higher manufacturing costs are squeezing profit margins for furriers. Maurizio Braschi, who has his own label in San Marino, says that dressing and manufacturing costs are up, respectively, 50% and 40% over the past decade. Even so, business is booming, thanks mostly to affluent clients in Moscow. He travels the world in search of high-quality pelts, especially those caught in the wild. "It's like when you're cooking," says Braschi. "You have to have the best ingredients to prepare the finest meal."

 

 

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