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The
Best of Talbert Briar in 2003
2003 was our first full year of living in Brittany, and it was hell
from the very first day! I'd thought 2002 was rough but between the
worldwide recession, the ongoing struggle just to grab a few working
hours in the shop away from the thousand other demands here, the
US/France hostilities over the Iraq war, and the plummeting value of
the dollar (which we collect most of our income in) against the euro,
it was a daily struggle just to stay alive and keep a roof over our
heads and buy food to eat. Over the course of the year, Emily began to
work more and more on pipes as well as pens, and she started making the
majority of our Ligne Bretagne pipes. We got our retail shop cleaned up
and (slowly) stocked with goods, and gradually turned the workshop from
a total mess into an efficient pipemaking environment. We even managed
to fix up our house a little, though we were too short on time to get
very far. As the year progressed, we settled slowly into our new lives
and made new friends here, as well as learning more and more about how
things work in France and how to get things done. There were very few
Talbert Briars made in 2003 (a grand total of 17, including the
Halloween pipes!). This was mostly due to two main problems - the
falling value of the dollar and the time and energy we had to invest in
getting both our retail shop and our Ligne Bretagne line going.
Throughout the year, we tried to maintain our prices in US dollars but
it became untenable, as the dollar was running around 20% below the
euro for the majority of the year. We couldn't afford to lose 20% of
the prices of our Talbert Briars because they are too labor-intensive,
so as a result they were barely produced while we focused on more
economical pipes that were profitable in the devalued dollar
environment. At the end of the year we made the difficult decision to
start charging in euros, which will make the pipes more expensive for
US buyers but will at least enable us to afford to continue making
Talbert Briars.
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Talbert Briar 
