Tidbit-11/18/07

A bit of news that arrived in my mailbox recently. I have been so extremely busy these past few days after coming home that I have literally not read umpteen amounts of emails….sorry friends, I’m catching up as soon as I can.

Well, it seems like the threesome of Floriani/Lebow and Ricky Brooks no longer has Fred Lebow as their stabilizer guru! An email sent by Fred to one of the Yahoo groups recently confirmed the news that I had been  hearing about for some while. RNK has now formed a partnership with Halcraft.USA, Inc. Hmmm, does this mean polymer clay, beads, etc are now going to be marketed alongside threads and stabilizers?? Nothing wrong with it but I can forsee a price hike in such items as the price hike with stabilizers and threads when RNK started up with Fred Lebow and Walt Floriani. Never before had I seen such a price hike as I did with Floriani threads and RNK stabilizers and all because of “name”. The Floriani threads are no different than Fufu threads which have been on the market for quite a while. Actually they are Fufu threads!  As Fufu decided to concentrate more on production of larger spools, the smaller spools are sold by RNK as Floriani threads. The stabilizers sold by RNK are no different than any of the hundreds out there in the market…except they bear the name “Floriani” or RNK. Each of these commodities carry quite a hefty price in purchasing and I’ve scratched my head many many times over the “why”!

Adding to the RNK team is Melanie Coakley of Signature Designs. Melanie has been in the commercial market for many many years and is quite a sweet person. My best wishes to her in joining the RNK team. Perhaps Melanie, if you are reading this, you may influence the price range of the threads and stabilizers that RNK sells.