L & M Site Down.

[Mike S]

I've noticed that the L & M Highland Outfitters site is down. I hope this is just due to maintenance and not something more dire.

It was bad enough when they ceased offering their excellent hide pipe bags awhile back.

[OC Richard]

I had heard that the chemical process they used for the bags, trade name "elk hide" but more accurately "chrome-tanned cowhide", could no longer be done due to environmental laws.

Those L&M "elkhide" bags last forever. I played one for nearly 20 years and would still be playing it except for it went with the pipes when I sold them.

I picked up a used one made in the 1980s cheaply on Ebay and have a backup set of pipes tied into it. They never fail!

I hope their sporran business can continue. It must be difficult when the market is flooded with Pakistani knockoffs for a fraction of the price.

[Mike S]

L & M has claimed the reason they stopped offering their superlative hide bags was both because the chrome tanning source for their hides has dried up (most of the best pit tanneries are located in Germany, and one of the largest among them DID go out of business recently), as well as the fact that the person who did the stitching of the bags retired. The were looking for someone qualified to replace him/her for awhile, but I guess that fell by the wayside.

I can't get used to the synthetic bags, and will have to switch to another make of hide/hybrid bag when my final L & M gives out.

Many of the Scottish sporran makers have claimed that the laws banning seal fur harvesting and sales in the U.K. and the U.S.A. has really hurt their business, and facilitated the influx of Sailkot Pakistan incarnations. I'm guessing that can't be helping Canadian based L & M either, although I believe it is still legal to harvest and sell seal fur there.

[MacCathmhaoil]

The site seems fine now.

[OC Richard]

It was amazing, when I first visited Scotland back in the 1980s, to walk into a Highland Outfitter and see a wall-full of sealskin sporrans (the beast being protected here in the USA, and evidently regarded as vermin in Scotland) and then visit a sporranmaker with a closet-full of badger pelts he couldn't use (that beast being protected in Scotland, and regarded as vermin, more or less, in the USA).

In the last decades of their existence The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were using North American badger pelts for their sporrans due to the Scottish stance on badgers. (Scottish and North American badgers look rather different, it's easy to tell them apart.)

About L&M pipe bag stitching, I seem to recall that at one point they switched to riveted bags. Or were those made by Michael MacHarg? For many years he made bags virtually identical to the L&M ones.

[Mike S]

MacHarg uses the riveted construction rather than L & M. He also offers stitched bags.

[RockyR]

Many of the Scottish sporran makers have claimed that the laws banning seal fur harvesting and sales in the U.K. and the U.S.A. has really hurt their business, and facilitated the influx of Sailkot Pakistan incarnations. I'm guessing that can't be helping Canadian based L & M either, although I believe it is still legal to harvest and sell seal fur there.

The banning of Seal in the EU didn't affect sporran sales. What it did affect was the availability of Bovine (cow) in suitable colors for a sporran since every sporran maker went looking for bovine skins at the same time (as did many other trades who used seal). Most cows are black or white or black AND white, not grey like the seal sporrans. There was a period (circa 2009?) where sporran makers were dying the white fur grey, but it looked unnatural, so most have stopped. In general, we've been left with getting "light grey" or white skins for dress sporrans in Bovine.

The influx of import sporrans from Pakistan (at a fraction of the price and quality of the Scottish made sporrans) had little to nothing to do with the banning of seal. It's a lower price point and people want cheap sporrans which is why they've been able to get a foothold in the industry.

It is still legal to make and sell Sealskin sporrans in Canada, which is why L & M is the only sporran maker to do those. That being said, they can't export those sporrans to the US or UK or EU, which I would guess are their biggest markets outside Canada.

[Mike S]

The various U.K. news reports have implied that the banning of seal fur partially led to the even wider acceptance of Pakistani made sporrans, since the seal fur was going to have to be substituted with lesser materials anyway, and seal fur had previously been the one "Ace in the hole" that Scottish makers had to combat the cheap imports. I never suggested that sporrans from those Asian suppliers led to the banning of seal fur itself.

All of this in turn, again according those same articles, has hurt sporran makers in the U.K.:

" Article: Scottish Sporran Makers Fear for Future as Pakistan Rivals Export Highland Wear
Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh, Scotland)
May 5, 2013
ONE of Scotland's age-old crafts is in danger of disappearing under a barrage of cheap Asian imports after a European court upheld a ban on sealskin, traditionally favored by sporran makers.Malcolm Scott, whose family-run firm has been producing sporrans since 1937, said the ban is making it harder for Scottish firms to fend off competition from Pakistan, where manufacturers in the city of Sialkot have specialized in Highland wear.He said Pakistan-made sporrans now account for the majority of the market, after making further inroads following the ban. His Edinburgh-based firm William Scott & Son has cut its workforce by more than half, from 22 employees to nine, since the EU ban on sealskin came into effect, and has also suffered losses on its stockpile of sealskins. …"


I'm simply passing on what I'm reading about the topic, and don't have an opinion either way.

[Mike S]

A few of the many news items discussing this, also mentioning the decline in profits and sales as a result:

http://www.scotsman.com/business/man...orts-1-2920646

http://www.scotsman.com/news/europea...rran-1-1037084

http://www.scotsman.com/news/pony-us...-ban-1-1369021

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/223127-s...l-fur-trading/

[imrichmond]

And to think that 30 years ago fashionable French women were proudly carrying Scottish-made sealskin sporrans as shoulder bags. How times have changed!