Marketing


17th October 2025

Changing the leather landscape

Selling unused assets to develop a business makes good sense. But in the late 1970s when Garners bought the Booth Group they promptly sold a redundant Booth site and company playing field. They also closed the tannery which I was running. My hope and expectation had been that this would lead to a new tannery […]

2nd May 2021

Mary Chan won the 2020 Design-a-Bag competition

I was very pleased to be invited to interview Mary Chan who won last year’s APLF Design-a-Bag competition with an really clever use of leather to produce a design that perfectly meet the very specific criteria. It is really inspiring to hear her talk about her material choice and thoughts on sustainability. The video is […]

13th August 2018

Marketing is about the stories that you tell

POSTED ON AUGUST 13, 2018 Getting you story right Today I was delighted to be observing the Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers being awarded a Fellowship of the University of Northampton at their July Degree ceremonies, to the obvious delight of their Chancellor, The Rev. Richard Coles who grew up locally in a […]

2nd August 2018

Getting your story right

Today I was delighted to be observing the Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers being awarded a Fellowship of the University of Northampton at their July Degree ceremonies, to the obvious delight of their Chancellor, The Rev. Richard Coles who grew up locally in a leather footwear family. The Reverend Coles gives every impression […]

13th November 2014

Thinking ahead

Leather is losing out around the margins to competitive materials. It may not feel important but in due course it will make it hard for tanners to sell all the grades profitably and the top end will not generate enough income to cover the bottom. Look at what others are doing. Icebreaker are a wonderful […]

20th October 2014

Chinese consumers

At this year’s All China Leather Exhibition in Shanghai anyone checking the traffic on the streets saw fewer black stretched Audi A6s than in the past. This is a good thing. Many in our industry assumed that the extravagant purchasing that included upmarket motor vehicles and fancy luxury goods would continue to accelerate in China […]

2nd March 2014

Luxury in leather. Some of the big trends

A webinar I ran from the University of Northampton

18th September 2013

Paris is back to centre stage

Cuir a Paris brings Paris back centre stage Cuir a Paris is on for the 25th time this week. I have to admit that there have been so much changes in shows in Paris since I began in the leather industry that I assuming that means twelve and a half years with the show twice […]

6th September 2013

Sixteen Years of ACLE

The All China Leather Exhibition (ACLE) has reached a milestone yesterday when it opened at the New International Expo Centre, in Shanghai. Launched in Beijing in 1998 as a business platform for China’s leather industry, the exhibition entered its 16th year. The event is not only important for what it celebrates, it is also an […]

2nd September 2013

Autumn Trade Fairs

POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2013 Sunday in Shanghai It’s Sunday and I’m in Shanghai. It used to be that whenever you went to a leather show you would start meeting people you knew at the departure gate, or later when lounges became common in the airline lounge. But times have changed. Our industry has restructured […]