Each Memorial Day weekend, Chicago's gay community welcomes thousands of leathermen and women from around the world for the International Mr. Leather contest and its related activities-bar events, leather exhibits, parties, and dissolute behavior at the host hotel. The visitors amble around downtown sightseeing and entertaining the natives, enliven our gay neighborhoods, and fill our bars with good-looking gay men on the prowl.
Although Sunday's IML contest is the main excuse for this temporary mass migration to Chicago, the weekend functions mainly as a "gathering of the tribe"-a chance to visit old friends from around the country, live in leather for a long weekend and have a quick vacation in a major entertainment destination.
Much of Chicago's gay community gets into the spirit of IML: Bars that are not normally leather bars have special events, some of the stores along North Halsted Street emphasize any leather-related merchandise they sell, and one Halsted Street art gallery is even holding a "Leather and Metal Night" featuring metal jewelry on bare-chested models.
No doubt the most popular feature of IML is the Leather Market, which serves as the social and commercial center of the weekend. The Market hosts more than 100 leather-related businesses competing with one another to tempt leathermen with their latest products-clothing, accessories, dungeon equipment, toys, films, etc. As a friend remarked, the Leather Market is "where leathermen engage in capitalist acts with consenting adults."
Until I started interviewing people for articles in the IML Program Guide, I had not fully appreciated how competitive the leather business is. I asked several vendors what they were offering that was new this year and was surprised at how many had new products, new styles they planned to feature.
Most vendors were delighted to talk about their products and the style trends they observed, but a couple, acutely aware of the competition, were wary of divulging much information in advance. "You're not going to publish this before IML are you?" one asked. "Just a couple of weeks," I promised him, "and think of the free publicity."
If some bright young economics student wanted to do a dissertation on gay entrepreneurship-and there still is no serious research on the subject-he or she would do well to study leather businesses as a microcosm of gay business. Any study would explore some of the following:
Each of the businesses tries to think of new products, styles, materials, colors that might catch the eye of leatherfolk. New styles? There are now at least 30 variations on leather harnesses, with multiple straps, chains, buckles, snaps and O-rings. New products? My favorite example is one company's easy-access "Grope Me Overalls." New materials? More clothing is made of various kinds of rubber and now something called "Corbura" (ask the vendor).
And color is everywhere this year. It used to be that you chose leather the way you chose a model T Ford: You could have any color you wanted so long as it was black. But now there are stripes and accents of red, green, blue, yellow, maroon. Old-time leathermen would be aghast. Or envious.
Once one company is seen as having a success with any of these, others quickly produce their own slightly different version. So each business feels a constant pressure to come up with something new each year. And the consumer benefits by having more choices, more styles to choose among and, usually, different prices.
Where do new ideas come from? Almost anywhere. There is no general rule for creativity but recognizing a good idea when you see it is the key to successful entrepreneurship. A business owner may suddenly think, Why has no one ever tried this? Or he may get an idea from some European style (motocross racing) or non-Western culture (a leather kimono). Or he may recall something from history (a leather three-cornered pirate hat). Maybe a patron asks for something to be customized for him, his friends like it, and the vendor decides to try it as a product line. Or he will adapt an idea from the mainstream fashion industry.
How do new leather businesses get started in the first place? Lots of different ways, it seems, which is why we need a serious study. But many are the result of "budding": Someone works for a leather business for a while then leaves to start his own business. Or someone from a parallel business such as mainstream fashion or design decides to apply his knowledge and skills to leather products. Or the owner of a totally unrelated business decides to start a sideline of leather products "just for fun" and it takes off.
Developing better information about these things could increase our understanding of niche markets in the wider economic system.
2 Comments for “Leather Entrepreneurship”
posted by Randy R. on
Well, um, Jane Jacobs wrote about this exact phenomenom of economic activity about 30 years ago.
So gay people support gay businesses? Stop the presses! Now THAT’S a scoop the NY TImes never got!
It would have been a more interesting article if they had mentioned the fact that the biggest part of any leather business comes from the straight community, which is true and actually an interesting insight.
Well, I guess cub reporters have to write up something, eh?
posted by dalea on
Great article. These are businesses that start small, usually stay small, have a low cost of entry and require access to a specialized market. The leather people already have this access. And many are creative types. My favorite always was the guy who invented a way to modify exercycles so that the pedals powered a dildo. Great concept.