International Leather Maker

In 2016, an article in The Atlantic told us that “the press takes Donald Trump literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally”. The 47th President’s first few days in office shows a new President Trump who intends to fully implement the policies he has detailed to his supporters and does not want to […]

Marketing communications relate to the where and the how of telling customers about what a company does. Leather is not sold directly to consumers, apart from hobbyists, but is used as a component. Its importance in these varies – it is the primary material in leather goods and furniture but for automotive and wristwatch bands […]

In discussion with an old friend recently, he noted that in this geopolitical era telling lies had become a badge of honour. He works in areas of business strategy, and it his job to note these trends and worry about their implications. Marketing has often been put into this category. Certainly, it is often used […]

Welcome to the new quarter century. There have many recollections of 2024, some very moving, and even more predictions about 2025, but this is the moment that tanners and our leather network friends should all be considering the world in 2050. It is a year that those of my age are unlikely to see, but […]

It is a boring adage that if you cannot measure something you cannot manage it, but mostly it is true. Hand staining vegetable tanned leather is one of very few tannery jobs that does not now involve numerical control. Otherwise, it is always about having accurate data. When all is well, measures are rigorously adhered […]

Doing things “at pace” has become a phrase used in politics this year to the point of boredom. Often, it’s trying to explain why a government is moving very slowly. But, for the British leather industry, the misery has indeed come at pace, first with the loss of tanner Pittards in the summer when a […]

I recently read that the oldest leather saddle known was found in China and is about 3,000 years old. Although the horse appears to have been around on the planet for a few million years, it was not until about 4,000BCE that it was domesticated by the pre-Yamnaya peoples on the Eurasian Steppes. The horses […]

Will the city state be taking a more dominant role in society? We often only think of them in terms of Ancient Greece – Athens and Sparta, or later Florence and Venice in Europe – but there were famous city state cultures ranging from the Mixtec city states in Mexico to the Malay city states […]

Some readers may remember Bakelite. Patented in the early 1900s, it is classed as the first fully synthetic plastic made from phenol from coal tar and formaldehyde from wood alcohol (methanol). It was a tough, chemically resistant plastic. In the 1930s, we had polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and nylon (polyamide), then a host of new materials […]

A further shift away from the dominant liberal democratic model of world governance became apparent at COP29 when Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, told a climate conference that “having oil and gas deposits is not our fault. It’s a gift from God”. Large sections of his audience applauded loudly. Azerbaijan remains almost total dependent on oil […]