The Comparison
The leather jacket industry has a Jos. A. Bank problem
If a jacket is on sale every month of the year, the price on the tag was never the price. Here is what the American heritage brands actually charge, what the jacket actually costs to make, and where the rest of the money goes.
The menswear lesson everyone already knows
For years Jos. A. Bank ran one of the most aggressive discount ladders in American retail — buy one suit, get three free, month after month. It worked, until it taught an entire generation of customers a lesson the company could not unteach: nobody pays the sticker price. Once that is common knowledge, the sticker price stops meaning anything, and the brand spends the rest of its life discounting against itself. Men's Wearhouse, the steadier operator, ended up buying them in 2014.
Look at the American leather shelf now. The heritage houses are excellent manufacturers — genuinely so, and we will say that on every page of this site — but most of them keep a permanent sale section running, with the same jackets appearing in it season after season at 40–60% off. That is not a clearance. That is a pricing strategy, and it tells you the four-figure number was always aspirational.
We would rather have one number that is true all year.
Every jacket we make, against a real competitor
Each row names the specific model we are quoting against and its regular published price. Shipping is quoted separately before you order rather than folded into the figure, because the argument only works if it survives being shipped.
| Pattern | Compared with | Theirs | Ours |
|---|---|---|---|
| NL-101Hải Vân | Schott NYCPerfecto 618 | $1050 | $449–499 |
| NL-202Đông Sơn | Aero LeatherA-2 Flight Jacket | $1100 | $419–469 |
| NL-303Sông Hoài | Vanson LeathersModel B | $950 | $389–439 |
Final price depends on your measurements and the hide you choose. A jacket cut for a larger body uses more hide, so the figure is published as a range rather than quoted low and topped up at checkout. Competitor prices are regular published prices at time of writing, not sale prices. If one changes, this table changes — tell us if you find a figure that is stale.
Where the other two-thirds goes
None of the gap is the hide. Full-grain steerhide costs roughly what full-grain steerhide costs anywhere; the tanneries that supply Asia supply everyone. None of it is the hardware, and none of it is the hours — a jacket is a jacket to cut and sew wherever you do it.
The gap is structural. A jacket that reaches you through a wholesaler and a shop has been marked up twice before you see it, and each markup has to cover rent, staff, unsold stock and returns. Add the marketing that a shelf brand needs to stay on the shelf. By the time it is hanging in front of you, more of the price is distribution than jacket.
We sell one way: you send measurements, we cut, a courier brings it. That is the entire route. It is not a clever trick and it is not a sacrifice in the leather — it is just a shorter line between the workshop and you.
What we will not claim
- That their jackets are bad. Schott, Vanson and Aero build superb outerwear and have done for generations. If you want a jacket made in Massachusetts by people who have made them for fifty years, buy one — it is a good purchase.
- That we are a heritage house. We are a workshop in Hội An. Our argument is construction and price, not lineage.
- That cheaper is automatically better. There is a floor below which leather goods stop being worth owning, and plenty of jackets sit under it. We publish hide type and thickness in millimetres on every pattern so you can check where ours sit.