We were lucky to catch up with Brett Robinson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Brett, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

I am an artist and craftsman that works in many different mediums but predominately in leather so in answering this question I’ll be speaking to the leatherworking industry in particular. Although I do believe this is a challenge in all creative pursuits my experiences are deep seeded in my leatherwork. My biggest challenge to profitability would have to be with pricing my work to be profitable. I find that I run into quoting people for leather jobs and the customer thinking that it’s too high. With the price of leather and materials then adding in my labor, a nice piece of leatherwork can be pricey. I find it hard to price my work to sell and therefore it can be challenging to sustain profitability. For example, people have got a quote from me and then turned around and found a similar product online for half the price. What they don’t always realize is that the quality of the product is reflected in the price but getting customers to realize that is also a challenge. I like to use my own experiences with my leatherwork in educating my customers that buying a piece of leatherwork from me is much like making an investment. I made my wife a leather belt that she wears frequently, that was 5 plus years ago and that belt still has many years of use left.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Brett Robinson and I have been drawn to creating since I can remember. I took art classes in high school and followed my passion in becoming a mechanic. Out of high school I went on to go to college at OSU Institue of Technology in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. I got an associate degree in pro auto tech, I worked at a diesel shop and worked on forklifts before finding myself helping in my parent’s business, a completely different artform. To this day I still work at my parent’s bakery, I keep the equipment working but I also help cook and bake. I air brush cakes, which has become very popular among the customers. About 8 years ago I had an opportunity to buy out a leather shop, I had never done much with leatherwork but knew that I had the aptitude for it. I opened a shop then covid hit and found that leatherwork was much more of a luxury item than a need I decided to move the shop home to cut my overhead costs. I still do repairs and other custom work; I sew on patches, do boot repairs and knife sharpening, but my bread and butter is my custom knife sheaths. I have really perfected this specific piece of leatherwork and am an avid knife collector. I have in the works to start making the knives as well as the knife sheaths and look forward to sharing more about that as it progresses.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I’d have to say my best source of new clients is from my current/past clients. I find that my work speaks for itself and when someone sees one of my pieces, likes it, and wants something similar they usually ask how they can get ahold of me.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

I used to sell on Etsy but have decided that it’s just not worth it for me anymore. I sold a few things in all the years I was on there. There is so much competition and the market is saturated with Etsy. I tried so many different things in my attempt to make that profitable but failed. I took better pictures thinking that would help, I used Pinterest to drive traffic but always felt like they’d end up in my shop not see what they liked or wanted, and they were off to the next person’s shop selling leather products on Etsy. I was just aiding in other people’s success on the platform. I realize that many find success with online platforms but unfortunately, I just wasn’t one of those. To add at least one pro to his question, Etsy did make it really easy to sell and expose people to your products without having to build a maintain a website.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: robinsonleatherworks
• Facebook: robinsonleatherworks
• Twitter: robinsonleatherworks

Image Credits
Mikel Mauree’ Photography