The Framers Forum

I have just spent what seems like hours trying to find a moulding ... any moulding, for a customer who has given me free rein to find a gold moulding to make a largish frame.
Can I heckers like find anything that is in stock, virtually EVERY ONE was out of stock until August or September.
Dates have been pushed back on availability so many times that I'm starting to question my ability to do the job any more.
About 75 % of my mouldings come from a well known supplier whose name begins with L/J or formerly A, and they are letting me down big time.
What or who do we blame for this predicament?

Might be worth asking these guys to make something up for you instead -> https://frintonframes.co.uk/

Industry in Italy goes on a big shutdown usually during july. Im guessing that some framers might have been stock up a bit before the shutdown and some of the UK suppliers have been caught out a bit. Lead times for orders might not be quite as good as they used to be, so that's not always helpful either. As far as I know both prosero and myself prduce our own gold mouldings and this can be quite helpful, when things like this happen. Have you tried Simons to see what gold mouldings they might have in stock. Simons are often the last place some people will look, so you might be lucky with Simons.

For some unknown reason, I don't get asked for gold mouldings very often at all. I used to make my own decorative gold frames, which is now, not all that often anymore. I have quite a large stock of pasta ornaments, which Lion were phasing out at clearance prices, so I guess that maybe Lion known something which I did not. I got a load of these and I've don't seem to have much of a market for such frames anymore. All I can do now is used the ocassional pasta ornament on the pediment on a pine framed mirror once in a while!

I think that the minimalist thing might have killed the decorative mirror market. I have not sold any decorative gold frames for years!

It may be a timber supply issue that is causing delays for the moulding manufacturers. I believe i am correct that many of factory finished mouldings use obeche. Latham's timber yard in Yate near Bristol is saying 6-8 weeks lead times for obeche stock. They are the only Latham's to stock obeche as they have several regular buyers.

Sorry, that doesn't help your search, but may explain the difficulty.

Nick

I've got a rack of moulding with 2 or 3 shelves worth of gold. Might be worth describing what you need and how much you are looking for, and someone may be able to help you out.

Does anyone know if this Is just a problem with gold mouldings, or are any other moulding being affected as well. It might be helpful to know about this! Perhaps, it's fortunate that when covid first started that I bought myself a decent amount of barewood pine and obeche mouldings. It would be nice to know if this is only a temporary glitch, or something longer term. It's quite a big surprise to hear this is happening!

I think this has always been a crimp. Italian factories have long Summer hols and if the importers are not stocked-up then
there are long delays. Of course, other world factors compound the problem.

Another reason I do only h/f mouldings. Rose&Hollis are brilliant. They were out of a couple of plain moulding recently
but all back in and delivered within two weeks.

Yes, Propero,

I really like Rose and Hollis a lot as well, but Rose and Hollis are not only good from that aspect, these also have quite a lot of quite nice "different" mouldings which have that little bit more extra interest, which I find really helpful. Obeche has those irritating little flects in the grain, but it's not that difficult to make these disappear, without lots of filling and sanding. I don't usually need to do any significant sanding whatsoever. Quite a lot of their narrower profile in Obeche are really good value and look just great.

We have been seeing the same thing in USA. Between new long term covid related shut downs in Asian countries and shipping related delays and price increases, many products are delayed. Demand for framing has also been high since 2000, with many shops being very busy. I'm sure this also puts higher demand on suppliers, many of which recently downsized in a big way.

We have a regular routine now to check with the supplier while the customer is still in the frame shop, to make sure they have it in stock, before we take a deposit. If it is backordered beyond a week, we will give the client the option to pick a different product.

I like to avoid being to dependant on suppliers having what I need in stock at any particular time. Running around seeing if other suppliers have something which is already out of stock at the usual suppier seems to me to be too often a losing battle. Sitting around waiting foe ages for mouldings to become available again just is not my idea of fun. I'm much happier nocking up stacked moulding frames, or hand finished frames to suit what a customer wants and I have a basic stock of about 40 to 50 bare wood mouldings and I generally work around those instead.

My shop is not the busiest shop around. I am based in quite a small town and I am very rarely rush of my feet at the best of times, which is the way I like it. Having to wait for something out of stock and when things finally come in again, only to get worked off my feet is not what a 69 year old like me enjoys doing. I like my life to be nice and easy these days. It works for me! I guess getting stressed up about all the hassle of these days is not for me anymore!

I wish OPs would return to the thread after they've posted. I sent the OP a PM last week which he hasn't seen because he hasn't been back to the forum. It's still sitting in the Outbox, along with a couple of others that haven't been read because the OP disappeared as soon as they'd posted.

It happens a lot!

Have you seen the Frinton gallery aka Frinton frames catalogues? They also make hand finished mouldings which they sell by length as well. The quality is great and the prices are not bad either! I bought some chevron samples of some of their more decorative frames from them. I must say that I was very impressed with the samples. I did not get any customers rushing to order any of them and perhaps I should have instead got myself some sample chevrons of their mouldings by length instead.

So o.k., turning the problem on it's head what's left which is decent quality mouldings, not gold? How badly is this going to hit availability of other nice mouldings other than gold mouldings. We've already heard from one framers not finding this very easy. Who else is struggling to get stock? Are anymore of us going to get hit hard by this?

Mark, if you go back to read the top of the thread, you’ll see that I recommended Frinton as an option in the second post listed.

Yes Jo,

I was adding a little bit more information in regard that most people know Frinton only for their hand finished frames only. But they do produce handfinished lengths of moulding as well. I may not have worded it particularly well. I also had no intention cause any annoyance to you and if I have unwittingly done so, the I appolgise! I hope that this shortage of gold mouldings is soon resolved.
Mark.