German cloth supplier

[bradnic]

Keep in mind they will expect fairly large orders.

[Cletonius]

Derp, need some of that 500/23

The blue überkaro?

I've got the anthrazit and beige on order from another vendor...

[anabolice30]

Top left

Derp, need some of that 500/23

[Cletonius]

I've emailed them asking for pricing per meter but haven't heard back. The other company I deal with sends an invoice with prices, this was just samples in a window envelope without anything else. They were showing through the window when I picked up the envelope.

Edit: it just came today too so I'm sure it'll be a few days on pricing.

[frankie591]

how much for 5 yards of anthracite houndstooth??

[Cletonius]

Top left

[anabolice30]

So I guess no plaid? :/

[Cletonius]

Seems like the guy is legit, samples showed up today.

[cunninglinguist]

Can you get a sample of the 0382 cloth?

[Cletonius]

So the guy from the company in the OP contacted me via Facebook... He's going to send me the samples I requested. I'll keep everyone updated

[Eric]

Would your supplier have e28 M5 highland cloth???

[Ray Smoodiver]

really? saw this posted on a ".za" forum. Lots of terrific E30s in NZ that's for sure. Or are you in NZ? thought you were an SA guy..

you confirmed my suspicions on minimum order volume. no wonder this cloth is so hard to find. I was told by my interior guy that the braun/tan houndstooth I purchased was the last 7 meters his supplier had. I bought all of it so I could have some spare.

My car is 1 of 506 from South Africa, was 1 of 2 brought into NZ from new by BMW NZ - long story, I know. All those mint cars are in SA, but we've got some sweet ones in NZ as well!

This is why you don't tell people where you get your rare stuff from.

Wow, that's a hard sell on the 100+ meters. Too bad everyone flakes, it wouldn't be too bad if you could get 12-15 guys to commit to an interior's worth.

It's an especially hard sell as that of the SA 325iS cars, not a hell of a lot got the Uberkaro cloth, so of an initial run of 506 cars, you'd be offering to maybe a third of that, not accounting for cars that had been written off or had swapped to leather.

By my reckoning, you'd sell MAYBE 35m of cloth to SA? It only takes 3.5m of cloth to do an interior as per factory specs, so the challenge would be to find 10 people that wanted to do their interiors in the first place.

[bradnic]

Yeah I'm sure Erik Johnson went through the same thing with his repro Evo cloth. Unless you have 20 people confirmed with deposits or something you would have to be willing to take a risk on inventory. and that 20 people number is PER FABRIC.. Maybe that minimum would be lower if you committed to multiple fabrics, say 75 vs 100m each or something.

assuming you'd go grey and tan on both ht and plaid that's 80 interiors worth of material.. as to retail value I would assume people would expect to pay more for real OEM cloth. Erik used to charge $75 a meter for his Evo replica cloth, 5 meters needed for an interior right? I know I paid more than that per meter for my OEM houndstooth.

so bottom line, you'd need to find a lot of people willing to pay a premium of say $500 or so each - and they'd still have to buy material for bolsters, headrests, door cards etc too!. best to leave something like that to folks that sell in volume.

[Cletonius]

Turns out someone was following the thread along and got the jump on the chaps on the forum and bought the stock out from underneath them - underhanded, but nothing you can do about it.

The company decided not to make any more unless it was stupidly large amounts (100m+) which would have been a logistical nightmare to setup as a group buy.

This is why you don't tell people where you get your rare stuff from.

Wow, that's a hard sell on the 100+ meters. Too bad everyone flakes, it wouldn't be too bad if you could get 12-15 guys to commit to an interior's worth.

[bradnic]

thanks for the detailed reply Ray.

South Africa via New Zealand ;)

really? saw this posted on a ".za" forum. Lots of terrific E30s in NZ that's for sure. Or are you in NZ? thought you were an SA guy..

you confirmed my suspicions on minimum order volume. no wonder this cloth is so hard to find. I was told by my interior guy that the braun/tan houndstooth I purchased was the last 7 meters his supplier had. I bought all of it so I could have some spare.

Still it's good to know there's a manufacturer for all the different plaid and houndstooth (except the silver uberkaro). Getting a new supply would require one heck of a group buy for sure. probably better for someone like Blunt or Levent to make the commitment.