Do you remember Savoy Leather?
For a brief period of time they were among the better-known leather holster-crafting companies in the industry. That’s not the case anymore, and the way they went out has caused a furor with former customers.
I had the chance to meet with their traveling team to an IV8888 Range Day a few years back. They had a table or two covered with their designer leather holster options They were nothing but courteous to me, and even left me with a free key chain made with their quality leather.
The montage below, courtesy of a 2018 post from Cleaver Firearms, can give you a sense of the kind of work Savoy Leather did:
They even earned a feature in Recoil, which hailed their work as “holster art.” Having seen a large portion of Savoy’s work in their prime, I find it difficult to disagree.
Things haven’t stayed as they were in their heyday.
Savoy Leather has fallen from their place in the lower rungs of leather holster royalty to somewhere to completely and utterly that there’s literally a Facebook group titled “Savoy Leather – ripped us off” with 473 members at the time this piece was written.
According to TacCat over at Just Pews, “The group is formed entirely (as far as I can tell) by individuals that had placed orders between April 2020-February 2021 and haven’t received their product(s) or an email response explaining why that is.”
While I can’t independently verify that time-frame (TacCat appears to have more access to this Facebook group, which is private), I can say this much with certainty: people are pissed.
“Anyone know what happened to Savoy Leather?” asked Reddit user TheOtherOtherJosh two years ago. “Website reads that it undergoing maintenance, their facebook page is deleted and I am not getting responses from customer service emails.”
“Savoy Leather closed business December 31, 2020,” he wrote in a later update. “Phone calls are directed to voicemail boxes that are full. Good luck to all (including myself) that paid for product and received nothing.”
The Savoy Leather BBB complaints are numerous, and they appear to be credible. One user wrote:
On 9/16/2020, I placed an order with Savoy Leather for a custom made leather holster. My order was accepted and my credit card was charged $207.99. My order number is ** I contacted them on 12/29/2020 asking for status and was informed they were having difficulties getting leather from their supplier due to the pandemic. I checked again on 5/28/2021 and discovered their telephone was disconnected and their website had been taken down. I cannot contact them at all now. I want either my money refunded or the product I ordered delivered. Your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
BBB Complaint
There are variations on the theme, but the theme is consistent. A lot of people are, or at least were at the time they complained, under the impression that Savoy Leather took their money and ran.
I can attest to the fact their web presence is now negligible. This is what their Facebook page search turned up:
This is what their website link turned up:
And while their Twitter page is still very much alive, its last activity is from January of 2021.
TacCat reported that a post in the aforementioned Facebook group said that Jeremiah Savoy had laid off four Savoy Leather employees at the end of 2020, telling them that they’d be recalled in February 2021. However, before that happened all employees were laid off and told that Savoy Leather wouldn’t be reopening.
TacCat said that there was an ongoing police investigation into Savoy Leather at one point. Things had gotten that far.
He also added that “According to [his] source, there have been enough complaints totaling enough monetary value that the investigating detective will be handing the investigation over the the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation to look into this situation further.”
Now, that quote is from 2021, and it is not immediately apparent what followed that investigation.
So, what did happen to Savoy Leather? I can’t say with certainty. However, it is abundantly apparent that a once-beloved pillar of the firearms community is not going to be fulfilling any orders any time soon.
Did you ever do business with this company? Share this out on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what your experience was like!