22.11.2019
Further to the October 23rd announcement in which Saga Furs and North American Fur Auctions entered into an agreement to work together to secure a stable selling channel for NAFA’s customers, the companies have continued to develop the form of their cooperation. Moving forward, Saga Furs will take care of the future business of the Nafa customers, which results in a huge increase of Saga’s mink collection for 2019/2020.
North America
Saga Furs will form a North American solicitation team consisting of Saga Furs and NAFA employees. The team will take care of farmer relations and collecting in North America. In season 2019/2020 Saga Furs will offer a North American mink collection with the core North American mink varieties such as Black, Mahogany, Pastel, Blue Iris and Unique Mutations. A special grading team will be formed in US that will respect the uniqueness of North American mink. The North American collection will consist of certified skins on North American size male boards. NAFA has agreed to licence the BLACKGLAMA trademark to Saga Furs to be used in selling and marketing the best North American Black mink, under Saga’s flag.
The grading of primary European varieties like White, Brown, Silverblue and Pearl will take place in Finland and the pelts will be included in the Saga Furs intersort. The use of European size male boards is required in this collection.
Europe
Nafa is cooperating for a smooth transition of their European customers to Saga. Nafa and Saga representatives are in contact with all farmers involved to discuss the best solutions for each individually. Saga offers to take over the contracted skins, in order to help the farmer to continue his operations. We will also provide a solution for the skins that are held in storage by Nafa and are waiting to be sold in better market circumstances. All skins collected in Europe will go to the normal Saga intersort. This means that male skins need to be processed on the normal European boards.
Please contact your local Saga representative if you have questions and need support in this transition period and also to update your account details and order the seasonal materials
Saga Furs offering in 2019/2020
Both the normal Saga intersort as well as the North American mink collections will be offered by Saga Furs at its auctions in March, June and September. The high quality North American mink will be a further significant addition to the already wide variety of European products sold through Saga Furs auctions.
Obviously, this agreement boosts the diversity and quantity of Saga’s mink collection, which will reach 11 to 12 million mink a growth of nearly 50%. The offerings of mink, fox, Finnraccoon and other furs in Helsinki next season will be undeniably the best in the world. The revised auction dates and offerings will be announced by Saga later this month.
While there will continue to be open questions during the transitional period, we will endeavour to answer them as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Saga Furs holds great value to continue the best service for our loyal Saga customers!