Looking for new moulding supplier

[Thyrsis]

Hi, we're getting very fed up with Arqadia, especially after they've just discontinued our main moulding without notice.
We framed all our own prints in this moulding - a 25mm silver/gold foil scoop finish.

I'm now urgently looking for a good quality replacement and wondered if anyone has any recommendations?

Thanks

[Roboframer]

Sometimes we can only be as good as our suppliers, but the thing is the same applies to them. I know that one of Arqadias suppliers has gone bust without notice - this affected work for a very good customer of ours, but she didn't sack us!

Post a photo of the moulding and/or give the refernce, maybe someone else does something very similar.

[Graysalchemy]

In fairness to arqadia they were left in the lurch as Robo says. But if you need to find a replacement then you will have to look elsewhere.

[prospero]

They have done this to me more than few times.

But in fairness, (as Robo says) the mouldings they sell are made by factories who have to cover virtually a world-wide market. If one particular style isn't selling well as a whole, then they aren't going to make another million feet or whatever.

One of many reasons I turned to hand finishing.

[Jonny2morsos]

Which Arqadia moulding is it? There may be a wholesaler with some stock one of us could put you in touch with.

[Thyrsis]

Thanks for your replies. The moulding is Arqadia 226655005.

[Jonny2morsos]

I have used that one in the past and some of the wider ones in both this profile and the flat profile.

A lot of colour options as well. Has the whole range gone?

I found the back edge chipped badly on the morso with this range. If you need some of the matching mountslips I have some which would now seem surplus to requirements if the whole range has gone.

[silvercleave]

Have you tried Simons, looks close to 2000/0061

Ian

[Roboframer]

Ha! I'm glad that one's gone!

I took the range on but self-discontinued most of it, including that one, pretty sharpish for reasons stated by J2M, trouble was that a 'trade' customer of mine had a sample of that one and I forgot that, so agreed to keep it for him only. Can't wait to break the news!

[Roboframer]

Has the whole range gone?

Well the other week I discovered the matching silver mount slip had gone. I asked if the gold one had and it hadn't, so I asked about what I still showed of the range (just the deep rebate in gold & silver) and they were OK too. Probably just a matter of time though, I mean, why discontinue a slip in just one colour? Probably because it's the most popular colour and there's stock of the rest for now.

[Not your average framer]

There seems to be quite a lot of mouldings being discontinued these days by a number of different suppliers. I guess the the recession won't have helped the situation either.

I've got the same problem with two other moulding which were in the previous Arqadia catalogue, but no longer appear in the current catalogue. They have a difficult finish to replicate, but I'm doing it anyway and the customers in question what their jobs for Christmas. (Life is fun)!

Both mouldings are the same profile, but the two customers have chosen different colour versions. The moulding has a finely combed base coat in one colour with the top coat in another colour which is distressed to show through hints of the base colour in places and there is a distressed gold scooped sight edge. I've built a contraption to finely comb the base coat and assembled the same profile by stacking two Rose & Holis bare wood mouldings together.

If all goes to plan, the resulting moulding will be very close to the real thing, but sometimes I wonder why I agree to do these things at all.

[Jonny2morsos]

According to the Arqadia website there is "124.55 available now" of 226655005

I looked at some of the others in the range and there seem to be low quantities of most but most surprisingly when I checked one of the mount slips it quoted no stock but due in 14/11/2013!!!

I have now removed all the examples of this range from my display and any remnants can be knocked up into ready mades for the new year. Not sure what I will do with all the mount slip though

If you stock Larson Juhl ranges you might want to check with your Rep. as a number of those are now discontinued too.

[Thyrsis]

According to the Arqadia website there is "124.55 available now" of 226655005

Yes, that's probably the faulty batch we returned! The quality of this moulding varied hugely, we also had problems with it chipping.
In one way we're glad we have to change it!

Our problem is that we only frame our own range of LE prints in one moulding. To change this means changing about 80 odd pages on our website to show the new frame!

[Thyrsis]

Have you tried Simons, looks close to 2000/0061

Ian

Yes it is close, thanks. We've been using this as a back up but we bought all their existing stock. Again the quality and finish is pretty poor and there's a huge amount of wastage.