Buying outdoors fabrics in NZ?

>So presumably someone else could be importing the same/similar fabric from source at much lower cost than Ripstop sell it. >Of course the market is probably far too small to be ordering high enough quantity. Even the two shops in Europe that sell that stuff have very limited selection of lightweight fabrics compared to Ripstop. This, I think. It seems crazy that a product goes from it's presumed source in Asia all the way to North Carolina before crossing the Pacific Ocean again to NZ, but it's all about economies of scale. If you tried to set up such a business here, the market is so small, you wouldn't be able to carry any reasonable selection, and you'd have to mark up everything by a factor of two or three so your prices wouldn't be competitive. If you tried to service Australisia it wouldn't work either as there's not much difference between shipping across the Tasman or across the whole Pacific Ocean. If you look at the Canvas Company (NZ), they stock some ripstop, it's not clear what specs (denier, weight per sq metre, waterproof rating...) but they want $20 per m for it. A local fabric store used to have some PU coated ripstop but they wanted $30 per m for it IIRC.

Keep in mind courier company does make a huge difference not only to price but also shipping time. Yes, Fedex and UPS are more expensive but I have been getting packages from Europe and North America in 5 to 6 right throughout the pandemic which is in line with their usual freight times. UPS is 12 to 14 days currently from Europe which is about 2 days up on pre-pandemic times. The few personal packages I have had come via USPS have been anywhere from 2 to 6 months.

> This, I think. It seems crazy that a product goes from it's presumed source in Asia all the way to North Carolina before crossing the Pacific Ocean again to NZ, but it's all about economies of scale Yeah, that's just how globalised economies and manufacturing work eh. I was going to email Aarn about buying some off cuts perhaps, but looks like they don't actually manufacture in NZ (which isn't surprising, perhaps). > Keep in mind courier company does make a huge difference not only to price but also shipping time. Definitely. Usually I don't mind waiting. Though I was unable to renew my visa in Ireland last year because the 5 day courier I paid for ended up taking 3 months - in which time the Covid pandemic hit us and they shut down visa processing for non-essential work. Using national post services rather may have been a mistake, not that any of us could have predicted how things would pan out in the early days 12 months ago.