Dear Mr Setter,
I was both surprised at the inaccuracies and somewhat incredulous nature of your article in the July issue of Leather International pertaining to price reporting on hides.
As you point out, there are and have been a number of market reports published for a number of years pertaining to both world, in the case of Ron Sauer, and various individual country or regional reports.
I must also agree with your point that numerous sources of information that various market reports query have their own agenda and to publish such prices without either confirmation or knowledge as to their accuracy is irresponsible to the reports’ readers.
PT Barnum once said: ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.’ I think this applies to the majority of the most widely distributed and renowned reports in our trade.
In other words, if an editor of a market report service continually receives erroneous and or misleading price information and reports it as fact, the readers of that report will cease to subscribe and take it seriously.
Market reports are a product or service, just like anything else. If the information is consistently inaccurate, the editor/publisher will end up writing for no one but himself and it will not be commercially feasible.
The Hidenet market report has grown rapidly as readers throughout the international hide, skin, leather and manufactured leather products community have learned that the information is accurate not biased. I know of a number of other reports that are essentially accurate, albeit different in style and format compared with our Hidenet daily and weekly reports.
The publishers of those reports are able to maintain their subscriber base as a result. Would you read the newspaper or watch television each day if the information was continually inaccurate? Neither would readers of the Hidenet reports and most others.
With respect to price reports in periodicals, I agree that the value of the information decreases due to the time lag between publications. However, for someone who is not trading hides on a daily or weekly basis, or some firm that is a supplier or customer to the industry, the general information is of great value for many obvious reasons. Periodicals have their place amongst readers who do not require any immediate news.
You seem to repeatedly emphasise that reading the plethora of reports takes time away from the trader’s primary purpose of buying and selling. You note that we are faced with a quantity of information that ‘is gigantic, monumental and growing’. Come on now Mr Setter, whoever you really are; is anyone holding a gun to your or anyone’s head to read everything that is available?
How many people even try to read, watch, or listen to every piece of information that is available to them in this day and age? The main benefit in this information age that we all are privileged to live in is that just about any type and format of information that we deem can be advantageous and of interest to us is now available. The choice of the media we choose is up to each of us.
Market reports are a valuable source of information for decision makers in all aspects of our industry. Without information on, chiefly, the US hide market but also all of the other markets throughout the world, people who buy and sell the commodities in which we deal are limited to only the people in the circle in which they communicate. Outside, objective regular reports on market activity, trends, and forecasts are the key to success for anyone not only in our trade, but in most others as well.
Don Ohsman
Hidenet.com
