in case y ou don't like to follow links unless there's some description attached, this points to an article about how sales of Vanson leathers have plummeted outside the US, correlating this to the decrease in approval and perception for the US around the world.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 22, 2007


I had thought that everything Americans wore was made overseas.

“Just about,” Bob Friedman was saying. “But we’re trying to keep that from being a truism.”

Friedman is the chief financial officer at Vanson Leathers, of Fall River. If you’re into motorcycles, you know that name. Vanson makes high-end jackets and racing suits for professional riders and others who like the look. They may be the best in the world at it. They sell millions of dollars worth overseas.

Or used to.

A lot of that has gone away in the last few years.

It has gone away because of how America is seen abroad.

Vanson is in an old mill, but walking through its operation gives you pride. Many of the jackets bear American flag insignias. When the labels say “Made in America,” it’s the real deal.

Friedman took me to the cutting room where workers start with finished black hides. We went to the showroom, where colorful racing suits hang on display. Cycle drag-racing is a bigger sport than I realized, and most riders wear Vanson. It’s not just because the designs look cool. The suits weigh 20 pounds, are constructed with bulletproof Kevlar, and there’s no question they’ve saved lives after wipeouts at 200 mph. Racers have called the offices here in Fall River to say they’d be dead if Vanson hadn’t made such a good product.

The brand has big cachet stateside and is still holding on in a few places overseas. The day I visited, there were two reps in Fall River from a Japanese firm that buys goods from Vanson, including jackets that look like something Marlon Brando wore in The Wild One. They sell in Japan for the equivalent of $2,000.

“The Japanese still like us,” said Friedman, by which he meant they like America.

It’s a different story in other parts of the world.

“You see those Buell jackets?” he asked. He was pointing to a rack of jackets with American flags on each shoulder. They’re part of the Harley line of goods.

“We used to sell tons of those to Europe,” said Friedman. “We don’t sell that much anymore.”

The reason, in short, is that U.S. policies, particularly in Iraq, have cratered the popularity of American insignia products. During its height, Vanson Leathers had more than $10 million a year in sales. In the last few years, it has fallen to half that, and it’s all because their overseas market collapsed.

We walked upstairs to the office of the owner, Mike Vanderseesen, who, like Friedman, was dressed casually in shorts.

Vanderseesen is 54, a motorcyclist himself who began the firm in Boston because he felt riders needed tougher, better leather apparel. At first, he imported finished jackets from England, but found the quality mediocre and decided to manufacture here.

He couldn’t find a pool of skilled apparel makers in Boston, so he set up shop in Fall River.

Today, Vanson is one of the last places in Fall River where you can find such workers, most operations having gone to low-wage countries. It’s not the Spindle City anymore. And now this company, too, is in peril, but for different reasons.

I asked Vanderseesen what’s happened.

Things were fine after we invaded Afghanistan, he said; the world understood that.

But by late 2003, because of Iraq, Vanson’s overseas business began to fall.

“The way Iraq was handled has been a huge problem for American brands,” said Vanderseesen.

Handled?

“Every time you saw a picture of Abu Ghraib,” he said, “our sales dropped.”

Was there really so direct a connection?

“Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”

I asked if sales might be hurt by Vanson goods being pricey.

They are high-end, he said, but they were sought out as a hot U.S. name in countries where it was cool to wear American leather.

No longer.

Because of the war, he said, many feel America now stands for belligerence instead of freedom. He said his sales instantly fell after Dick Cheney was on the front of The New York Times defending what some people considered torture. Guantanamo, he said, has hurt, too, and we’re seen as arrogant for holding out on the Kyoto global warming treaty.

Vanderseesen says this isn’t just his hunch; it’s what he is told during the 20 or so times each week he’s in touch with European reps.

Might he be blaming Bush because he personally doesn’t like the president’s policies?

He said he voted for Bush the first time. And though he wouldn’t again, he insists his point is about business.

“America has always been regarded as a place that stood for something good,” Vanderseesen said. “That’s been hugely damaged.”

When it became impossible to sell jackets overseas with an American flag on the shoulder, he took them off. But the Vanson name is known in Europe as a U.S. brand, so sales continued to lag.

Once, in Geneva, someone took a razor blade and cut the labels out of 35 jackets because each bore a flag and said, “Made in America.”

Vanson has gone from 160 employees to half that. Bob Friedman told me of the afternoon he had to lay off 30 workers. “People were crying,” he recalled. “It was the worst day of my business life.” The company is now trying to work its way out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Although things remain bad, Vanderseesen and Friedman said overseas sales finally inched up a bit lately. I asked what caused it.

Vanderseesen said it began soon after the Democrats handed Bush a defeat by winning back the House last November.

Europeans noticed that? And reacted to it as consumers?

“What happens in America,” he said, “is watched under a microscope overseas.”

He wishes the White House would realize that.

We chatted for a while longer.

Finally, I headed out, past rows of empty stations.

American flags hung proudly from the ceiling