Scotweb.co.uk is now redirected to clan.com

[AustinDiver]

The subject says it all. The old scotweb.co.uk website is not available.

Be careful about the new site. Ordering items made with the special weave DC Dalgliesh material are extremely expensive. Buying the raw fabric will cost about $110/meter with a 4 meter minimum.

If you order a kilt or a fly plaid, etc in a custom weave tartan, the underlying `pricing engine will charge the customer $175 per meter. A kilt that costs 475 or so in an HOE tartan will cost about 1450 or so for Dalgliesh 16 oz weave. A tartan TAM with 1.4 meters will cost $252.

[KennethSime]

I think this was a long time coming.

Is the pricing you mentioned incorrect? If so, I'm sure they'd appreciate it of the matter was brought to their attention.

[AustinDiver]

I think this was a long time coming.

Is the pricing you mentioned incorrect? If so, I'm sure they'd appreciate it of the matter was brought to their attention.

I am unsure about pricing. A hand sewn kilt will cost close to $2000 in Dalgliesh 160z.

They are considerably more than some hand sewn kilts that I commissioned in August 2019.

The pandemic may be a factor. Higher fixed costs.
The XMTS discount was dropped in January. Scotweb points are no longer avaialble.

I priced a balmoral kilt in a special weave late 2019 on the website and the price was comparable to the old site. The hand sewn kilts in DC Dalgliesh were much more on clan.com vs scotweb.co.uk.

Demand may be very high right now. The Dalgliesh fabric was around $90/meter in 2019.

[Tomo]

They have been doing a "soft" launch for about a year.

I had noticed some pricing discrepancies between the old and new site (although they appeared to cut both ways with some items being more expensive on the new site and other less - of course the things I wanted were all more expensive) and commented here a while back that XMTS discount was not available on the new site.

Oddly enough, I placed an order last night and took a punt by entering the code "xmarks" at check out - and this works - previously the discount was applied automatically, with the new site it needs to be added manually.

On the custom weave - I had looked at this a couple of months ago on another forum - someone was looking to re-sell a kilt he bought on ebay and trying to value it. It still had the tags and was Stewart Blue - a custom weave - he had priced it (at the time) at $1200. Shurely shome mishtake - but I checked it out and yep that's what it came up with.

All the other custom weave tartans were in the same price bracket and with 21 weeks lead times.

If anything they are now even more expensive (but that might be down to currency fluctuations):



The possible impact of Covid is hard to gauge (not to mention Brexit) but whilst I have seen some UK based suppliers really hike their prices - no doubt to cover short falls in sales - I have seen just as many dropping their prices and running promo's and special offers - to increase sales.

[Tomo]

The other thing I have noticed with the "new" site is in terms of the choice of cloth.

For many items (other than kilts) there is no longer any choice - it's this cloth in this tartan or nothing. Of course that makes sense for them - but limits the choice of their customers.

For kilts and some other items there is still a choice - but they no longer provide info on the mills.

For example, an 8 yard Balmoral kilt in Ancient MacFarlane Hunting offers 7 choices - two of which are in 16oz fabric, these are described as:

• Strome Select range. A heavy worsted wool, hardwearing with a slightly rough and ridged finish, hardy and long-lasting, ideal for a traditional 8 yard hand made heirloom kilt, though with a tuck-in selvedge; woven by a top Scottish mill, this specialist range of rarer tartans has a very large sett; their ancient shades in this fabric range are typically pale and subdued, which some may prefer; and

• Artisan Tartan, Heavy (Narrow) Simply the finest traditional kilting tartan available, by Scotland's premier tartan weaving mill, deep in the Scottish Borders. Your pure new wool fabric will be woven to order on narrow width looms using time-proven hand-crafted methods. This robust fabric has a high thread density and is ideal for kiltmaking, or also for upholstery - in fact anywhere you'd want a really durable finish. The traditional shuttle loom finish means that a hem may be required for kiltmaking.

​
From the descriptions and further info it might be possible to work out which mill a certain cloth comes from.

Strome is a name used Lochcarron for their heavyweight tartan - but to the uninitiated this isn't obvious. The description is also not quite as glowing as that given for the Artisan tartan. Which, with a little guess work is from DC Dalgliesh - their own mill (the Artisan label is one they use to generally describe their tartans - but the real give away is the images for these have the Clan watermark).

With the other weights there is perhaps less to go on, Brariach and Reiver are mentioned (both Lochcarron designations) but for others there are only references to a "highly respected Scottish weaver" etc. Most likely HoE as Marton Mills are south of the border.

Seams a little odd to no longer provide this level of transparency.

[AustinDiver]

.
Seams a little odd to no longer provide this level of transparency.

I have seen other vendors like House of Tartan try to hide their providers.

In the case of tartan, in the past, I pay closely to the mill that I am selecting.
The other kilt suppliers for the most part make it clear which mill is supplying the tartan.

[AustinDiver]

I may investigate buying just some fabric and have the kilt constructed state size. Scotweb built up a brand. In 2020, the US got in a trade war and put hefty tariffs against Scottish wool products.

The price increases cause a double whammy and I will likely get hit with hefty taxes. An $1100 kilt now cost $1950 plus around $150 or more in import fees. Might as well import $800-$900 in cloth and use a kilt maker in the US and pay $110/meter instead of $175/meter.

[figheadair]

Give that a lot of what Clan.com is apparently now do is act as nothing more than a middle-man for other firm's material at an inflated price, I don't understand why anyone would use them in preference to going to the actual weaver.

[AustinDiver]

The Balmoral kilts are contracted out to the McNaughton group if I am not mistaken.
A paper fell out of a kilt that I received that mentioned McNaughton. The tartan was a HOE, but McNaughton also
has a very healthy kilt production operation.

[Nick Fiddes]

I've just had this thread pointed out to me so I'll do my best to respond from the horse's mouth, though I can't promise to reply to every detailed point... not least as because like many other businesses our policy is not to reveal our suppliers unless we're promoting particular brands. Our view is also that we carry the can by putting our name behind the product and taking responsibility for the quality, and for most customers too much detail can be confusing. You may dispute whether that's consistent or wise, but in the end it's our commercial decision. And actually we're pretty human about it, so if you're already informed and interested enough to want confirmed which mill is weaving a fabric, we'll certainly tell you. It only takes a moment to ask.

As for the transfer to CLAN, yes this has been a long time in the planning, and is still far from complete. In fact we've been working on it for more than a decade! And the new site was soft-launched several years ago, with a very complicated transition due to the technical complexity that I won't bore you with. We're aware that there are still teething problems, and the new site works on such totally different technology that nothing is simple to keep fully in sync as we've switched over. But we're confident the new site will be vastly better once we're through this phase, letting us build new facilities that you can't find anywhere else. Meanwhile through we're mostly focussed on getting the basics fixed, with a small team and where we have indeed been hit badly by Covid in various ways.

But what I can tell you is that the Dalgliesh fabrics are in no way over-priced!! In fact we barely break even on artisan fabric, and we continue to offer these mostly as a service as it's the last place on earth still weaving any (non-copyright) tartan in short lengths with a full natural selvedge, the traditional way. If you only knew the amount of hand-labour that goes into every piece woven (watch the ancient video on the DCD site) there's more than a day of skilled labour for each weave before it even starts on the loom, with much more afterwards. Sorry if it's expensive, but this barely covers the production costs let along overheads or profit!

Where there are less expensive alternatives from other weavers, we promote these at a competitive mark-up. We do our best to be the simplest and clearest place to compare all available fabrics from all suppliers, where you can then order at the most competitive prices. (The mills themselves shouldn't sell for less direct to retail customers, as that would be slitting the throats of their entire retail chain.) For products we still aim always to make the widest possible choice of tartans available, but sometimes this is now less prominent (i.e. complex) as we've found most customers prefer a simpler process based on the most popular/recommended fabric.

Sorry if I've not been here to communicate as much as I'd like. I'm incredibly over-worked as are the rest of our team, so I'm just doing my best, like most people, to keep on top of the most urgent stuff. But we still do our very best to run a good business that deals fairly with everyone. And if you've any specific complaints, we try to sort them out by treating people like we'd want to be treated ourselves. We hope to get the automated Xmarks discount working again when we can. But meanwhile, if all else fails, just email the customer service team and they'll give you 10% off!

Please bear with us. Thanks, Nick