International Leather Maker

Last week I asked Chat GPT if it would write my weekly ILM comment article on how the rising cost of money will impact the leather industry. Did you notice? Chat GPT is an amazing tool that can handle almost infinite amounts of data from which it creates novel material such as text and images […]

Despite the most challenging global environment in living memory, a lot of individual tanners are doing surprisingly well. While still busy complaining about the situation, many have been incredibly astute and fleet of foot in adapting to complex ever-changing circumstances. The apparent end of cheap money after three decades adds an additional layer. As the […]

When you buy a pair of shoes, how long do you expect them to last? One year, three years or even longer? Do you clean and polish them regularly, repairing scuffs, or let them show all the wear and knocks? Do you take them for repair if the sole wears or starts to separate? Do […]

A couple of days before Christmas, I sat in a coffee shop in Street, Somerset, in the modern retail site where the footwear brand Clarks started in 1825. What should have been a short pre-Christmas conversation with an industry colleague (not a Clarks’ employee) saw minutes turn into hours as we casually swapped thoughts on […]

When I did my MBA at the University of Bath in the UK, we were offered a short course on speed reading and mind mapping. I then began using a mind maps notebook to look at global trends, learning how they interrelate and trying to understand the ways issues might feed down to the leather […]

If there is one podcast you listen to this year, switch on Leather and meat on the inside at COP27 from ILM’s View from the Top series. It involves a discussion with Stephen Sothmann, President of the Leather and Hide Council of America, who attended COP27 along with Eric Mittenthal, Chief Strategy Officer at the North American […]

Who said marketing was easy? Please have a word with Balenciaga! They have managed two major errors in short order and are on their knees praying for forgiveness from all and sundry, in particular a very well-paid brand ambassador you may have heard of called Kim Kardashian. Brands, even a component brand such as leather, […]

Tom Poole (1766-1837) was a forward-thinking tanner in the south of England. A plaque was recently placed on his house to celebrate his life of philanthropy on the date of his 256th birthday. This poem was written for the occasion by well-known poet and author Diana Barsham who, with her husband, currently owns the house. Birthday […]

“Leather needs simply to engage consumers at point of sale and be where consumers pay the bill,” said one commenter on LinkedIn recently. Every sector of the leather business faces multiple challenges, a bit like a congregation of perfect storms. Two weeks ago, we looked at some of the issues facing the automobile leather business, […]

COP27 is now underway and is already shaping up to focus more on agriculture than in the past. So, it seems no coincidence that only a week ago the New York Times published a front-page article featuring a personal attack on Professor Frank Mitloehner by suggesting there is something immoral and underhand about his research […]