> raw leather and leatherwork tools

You expect retail outlets for that? 30 years ago when I was making my own shoes in London and wanted to buy hide I had to trail around grimy industrial areas to visit a wholesale warehouse and persuade them to do retail for a moment. (I bought my tools from other hobbyists.)

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cucumber3732842 a day ago | parent [-]

This. People forget how much more stuff was niche or industrial/b2b only before ecommerce came along.

Industrial businesses were less rigid about avoiding retail sales than today but it was still way more hassle and generally "the dark ages" comparatively.

	▲	laughing_man a day ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed. It's a whole lot easier to engage in esoteric hobbies these days, because there just has to be a single warehouse somewhere, maybe even in another country, willing to sell you what you need. Periodically I watch YouTube videos made by a historian of clothing. She makes a lot of clothing for research and display, and she had an episode on where to purchase linen and what to look for to make sure you don't get a sub-par product. When I was growing up you just wouldn't have been able do something like that unless you were living somewhere like Paris or Milan.