Mike Redwood
October 23, 2024
Leather devoid of marketing
When politicians struggle, they regularly blame the lack of voter understanding and demand better “education”. For most of the last century this was the leather industry’s position.
There were two problems. It was not the lack of education but the message that was wrong plus the leather sector never tried to get any collective message out anyway. Apart from one or two great tanneries the whole idea of marketing communications and branding of companies or leathers was ignored. Leathermaking was devoid of marketing; it has not changed.
Marketing involves the whole mix of macro environment studies, consumer attitudes, company skills, competitive environment, market segmentation and targeting; only then aspects of product, price and communications. For leather that communication is complicated by leather’s role as a component. Effectively this involves consideration of push or pull marketing with big implications for resources and costs.
There are other marketing decisions involving communications with local community and governments who have the power to interfere with operations through legislation. Tanners usually address this via trade associations but increasingly wider, more global, campaigns are needed.
Rare for tanners to communicate properly
In my experience tanners have rarely considered this, although they have become better at complaining through social media – or via some vocal individuals. Social Media was itself thought to be the solution by offering a cheap shortcut to get leather’s voice heard avoiding the thinking, planning and investment of proper marketing. Initially the various platforms had different audiences and skilled practitioners could target designers with one, consumers and press with another and so on. Now they have homogenised into money earning organisations, it is now paid media, and useless if not funded into a much larger plan, which will likely require work on selected print media and other older outlets.
We have a better message
The leather industry rightly celebrates now having a coherent narrative backed by researched evidence. It knows that if leather responsibly made has a good story. Having a better, believable, message does not excuse the tanner from doing a proper job in marketing. Sticking a post on LinkedIn is fine for talking to the leather trade, might seep out into the wider world but is not marketing communications never mind marketing in the round.
Over the last two decades a few tanners have begun to do interesting work on places such as Instagram and have raised their profile, but few give evidence of this being part of a wider campaign. The number of tanneries seriously investing in what might be considered as marketing and branding appears to have declined compared with the 1990s rather than increased.
We have some top countries and individual organisations such as Consorzio Vera Pelle, which are a group of vegetable leather tanners from Italy with a long-standing record of pushing out beyond the immediate horizons with a variety promotional activity. Add One4Leather who target the auto industry and people such as Yusuf Osman, the Leather Craftsman turned showman we have most of the total of leather marketing outside of the valiant work of Leather Naturally.
In an industry producing over 20 billion square feet per annum why does the primary industry marketing body gets so little support compared to what we have seen in wool, cotton and milk? Equally why have the national and international organisations such as the International Council of Tanners’ still got big gaps in membership: they must be resourced to do their work properly. How can it be that after almost twenty years of leading the way as an outstanding third-party auditing body LWG gold rated tanneries do not have consumer hang tags throughout the world for their top tanners. It is much more than an expensive self-congratulatory industry exercise, but it does not always feel that way.
Share of voice
The battleground for leather communications involves fighting for share of voice with a well-financed, fanatical, anti-leather lobby mixing animal rights with vegan fundamentalists who attract committed funding from rich and poor individuals and organisations. They have hundreds of millions of dollars to leathers tens of thousands.
Also taking share of voice are competitive materials. By comparison to leather they have a business strategy that links research, product development and marketing in ways that are sometimes hard to explain to tanners.
I continue to support those forward-thinking tanners who have been willing to seek out relationships with the best of these materials. They look at technical and commercial cooperation to help push the pure fossil fuel material out of this space. Both sides are learning, and we will see much better new and hybrid materials with which to replace plastics.
Meanwhile much of the leather industry activity on social media and elsewhere seems to be a campaign of despair and hatred, which debases the narrative that the industry has worked so hard to develop. Often this also complains about yesterday’s materials as competitors hurry forward faster than leather with products.
The future
Glimpses of what might be possible come from the occasional individual such as Junaid Vohra – aka The Leather Dude – from Pakistan who does excellent work educating schoolchildren, largely using the material prepared by Leather Naturally for his underlying narrative. I have never met him, but he does create opportunities to speak with politicians who would not normally interface with an industry like leather. Our recently published COP29 Manifesto needs more like him to push the word out to such influential people who will not see it online.
The initial subscription plan for Leather Naturally matched one intercontinental trip by a leather executive. Enough tanners supported this to make an outstanding body of freely available material to underpin and promote the true leather story that we all, including Junaid, now use. It’s new register of repairers is outstanding. Leather Naturally has since simplified subscriptions so that companies with turnover below US$10 million pay much less.
The leather industry has overcapacity. A few tanners are doing very well, but most are struggling. A small investment in a thorough strategic marketing approach plus support for our institutions to give the industry a proper share of voice is badly needed for everyone to prosper.
Michael Redwood
Leather chemist, writer, and advisor on responsible leather manufacturing and material strategy. This article was originally written for ILM.