New leather conference a great success - Micro

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New leather conference
a great success
T
he inaugural ‘Beast to Beauty’
leather conference took place near
Oxford on May 15 with around
100 leather professionals in attendance.
The conference–jointly organised by
training consultancy Leatherwise and
World Leather magazine–consisted of
stimulating presentations from experts in
all segments of the leather supply chain,
from luxury finished goods (the ‘Beauty’
element of the title) to current issues
affecting hides and livestock (the ‘Beast’).
Around the room, 20 design students
from several UK colleges and universities
had set up displays of their design ideas
involving leather. These included
handmade shoes, jewellery, garments and
interior design ideas.
The students themselves were among the
delegates with their attendance sponsored
by the leather industry’s ancient Livery
Company of the City of London, the
Leathersellers’ Company. The Master of the
Leathersellers, Anthony Collinson (above),
was the guest of honour at the gala dinner
following the conference.
10
But the event started with a keynote
address from prominent designer, Bill
Amberg. A specialist in leather throughout
his career, Mr Amberg started by saying
that leather was “the only material we’ve
got left that still requires the human hand”.
He said this was what had driven him on.
He explained: “Leather is a fabulous
thing; we can do lots of things with it that
you can’t do with other materials. It has
associations with flesh, which may be one
of the reasons it’s sexy. But it also has
associations with death and, I think, with
freedom and power.”
When he had finished speaking, Peter
Laight of Joseph Clayton & Sons of
Chesterfield commented that Mr Amberg’s
presentation had been “the most
inspirational, sensitive and intelligent talk
on leather” that he had heard in 35 years in
the industry. A full account of what he said
will appear in the August-September issue
of World Leather.
Next, the two founders of Leatherwise
gave a light-hearted presentation that
aimed to reinforce the message that leather
is a beautiful, versatile, natural material, no
matter what its critics may say.
Amanda Michaels played
the part of the devil’s
advocate, raising questions
on animal welfare, comfort,
health risks, environmental
damage and aesthetics. Her
colleague, Chris PowleyWilliams countered every
argument.
To give as complete an
overview as possible of the
livestock sector, Dr Phil
Hadley of the
English Beef and
Lamb Executive
spoke about hide
and skin supply. He
said he felt the
livestock industry
gave
inadequate
consideration to the
leather sector, but added
that he suspected that the reverse might be
equally true.
Perhaps the principal reason for this, Dr
Hadley suggested, was that, unlike in the
Americas, most of the farms he deals with
are small, independent businesses, familyrun farms with, on average, no more than
28 cows or 200 sheep.
“It’s true that these farmers tend to be
poor co-operators,” he said, “but we are
hopeful that some collaborative initiatives
might be possible.”
He mentioned one such scheme, which
began recently in southwest England, the
region for which he has specific
responsibility. The idea is to help and
encourage even the smallest-scale farms to
keep their cattle free from lice.
He explained that farmers
were often unaware of the
proportion of the money they
receive for a head of cattle
that pertains to the hide and
said his organisation was
working hard to raise
awareness among farmers that
better hide quality would
mean more money for them.
“For most, it’s about £0.10
per kilo for the hide,” he
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continued, “but it can be more. The hide
should be the fourth most valuable product
coming off the beast, after the fillet, the
sirloin and the rump. We need to recognise
quality and get some of the benefit back to
the farmer.”
Dr Hadley showed a statistic that
suggested that the proportion of highquality hides available globally to traders
and, through them, to tanners was 27% in
1980 but that, by 2000 (the most recent
year for which he had official figures), this
had fallen to 12%.
“I realise that 2000 was quite a long time
ago,” he said, “and my personal opinion is
that the proportion could well be in single
figures by now. There is less intervention in
developing countries.
“The initiative I was talking about has
led to an individual farm producing 95%
grade-one hide quality in an area in which
the average is 45%. But what is the benefit
to that farmer if the average drags him
down, if we just go for the lowest common
denominator? We need to recognise
quality–because quality adds value to the
leather market–and get some of the benefit
back to farmers.”
A tanner’s perspective came next when
Mike Dodd (above), marketing director of
Pittards, took the floor. He commented
immediately that hearing complaints from
the farming sector was very familiar, but
added that the leather industry was good at
complaining too. The main point is, he
insisted, that the leather supply chain is full
of its own complexities and all players
involved need to understand one another.
Examples he gave of the peculiarities of
the leather supply chain included
“distribution curves” that a hide often
travels along on its journey from beast to
beauty, and the irrefutable fact that–unlike
cars or tubes of toothpaste–no two hides
are identical. “It’s even the case that no two
parts of a single skin are the same,” he
added. “There’s massive variation and it’s a
real challenge to specify. Lice and ticks are
a reality and they have an impact on the
WORLD LEATHER JUNE/JULY 2008
raw material we buy, and the further we
process the leather, the more we see the
flaws.”
Complexity also comes from the global
nature of the tanning business; tanners will
import material from “wherever it makes
sense”, and their purchase of chemicals and
components is very often from global
suppliers.
However, he went on to argue that all
this effort was worthwhile because the
work that tanners carry out transforms a
hide from being a fibre that is unstable–it
will putrefy if you leave it–into something
stable, something that, for example, won’t
shrink if it becomes wet. But because of the
huge variance in raw materials, in tanning
treatments and in finishes, Mike Dodd said
he thought it inappropriate for customers
to expect companies like his to start
making leather from specification sheets.
“I don’t feel that’s the best way to get the
most from a tanner,” he explained. “It’s
best for us to build a relationship with the
customer. Customers know what their
consumers want and they’ll get far more
out of us if they share that information
with us. In turn, we’ll share our expertise
with them.”
He said Pittards could work from a
specification sheet if customers insisted,
but that this usually stifled innovation and
enthusiasm. Plus, he mentioned examples
of customers getting the specification
wrong. A prominent US apparel brand
sent its fabric specification sheet to the
tannery offering what the marketing
director termed “ISO 9000 pieces of paper
to determine something as beautiful and
variable as leather”.
On another occasion an automotive
company, for which Pittards was to
produce sheep leather, sent a specification
for bovine leather, failing to take into
account the huge differences in hide
thickness and other characteristics.
“The more we share, the closer can get to
any spec,” Mike Dodd concluded. “There
are rewards from the collaborative process;
we’ll give to you if you give to us.” He said
mistrust was part of life in the leather
industry and that the only way to break it
down was with “lots of hard work, and
real-life examples”.
With true supply chain integration in
place (and the genuine sharing of
information that this entails), he insisted
Pittards can make tens of thousands of
square-feet of leather in a week or ten days
for a client if it has to. “But we have to
know,” he emphasised. “We can’t invest
cash in having the skins there ready just in
case.”
A splash of colour
The next speaker, Julian Osgood (above)
of colour solutions provider CPS Color,
confirmed Dr Hadley’s point about the
diminishing availability of quality raw
hides. Mr Osgood said this meant that
finishing products and techniques–such as
special coatings after wet-end processing–
were often required to disguise defects
these days.
He likened the products tanners can use
for this purpose to make-up, and said
leather finishers were “make-up artists” for
the industry. He said: “It’s a cross between
a science and an art-form. We can
sometimes perform miracles, but it’s a
compromise.” If leather finishers “get it
wrong”, he warned that it can be hard to
differentiate between the resulting leather
and plastic.
Modern machine spraying equipment
can certainly make the job quicker and
easier. Also, the ability modern tanning
machinery gives users to apply imitation
glazed finishes–removing the need to use
older (often dangerous) glazing machines–
is contributing to improved health and
safety in the sector. “But you have to be
careful not to overdo it because the leather
really can end up looking like plastic,” he
reiterated.
Dry-drummed finishes merited a special
mention in Julian Osgood’s book. “They
give a lovely grain effect,” he said, “so that
even weighty pieces of leather feel
beautiful–and smell beautiful too.”
He closed by repeating the point that the
most important factor of all was the quality
of the raw material, saying he couldn’t
emphasise it enough.
Academic approach
Dr Mark Wilkinson, representing the
University of Northampton’s British School
of Leather Technology, spoke next. He told
the audience that the school had been
established in 1978 with a grant of
£500,000 from the Leathersellers’
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Dr. Mark
Wilkinson
Company, but that the landscape had
changed a great deal since then.
He explained: “Fifty years ago,
Northampton
was
a
thriving
manufacturing centre. We couldn’t say that
still held true today, but I can tell you that
there are 100 leather businesses in
Northamptonshire today, with a combined
turnover of more than £200 million.
Maybe we’re not manufacturing any more,
but the knowledge management is here.”
He said the school was changing to reflect
this, moving its focus towards “higher
added value”.
This will mean attracting £800,000 in
new investment from industry and other
sources, which the University of
Northampton will match. It will mean
continued development of overseas
partnerships with institutions such as the
Lederinstitut Gerberschule in Reutlingen,
Germany, with which Northampton
already has a strong and growing
relationship (see separate article in this
issue).
For overseas students, Dr Wilkinson
explained that the biggest change would be
the expectation that they would complete
the first two years of study in their home
countries–India, Pakistan and Thailand all
provide important numbers of students
these
days–before
travelling
to
Northampton for two further years of
learning.
Course work will involve “a further reach
into the manufactured product”, he
continued, with fundamental research to
support the teaching on offer. Research
activity at the school is also growing as the
department for which Dr Wilkinson is
associate dean (the School of Applied
Sciences) endeavours to establish two
centres of excellence: one in leather and
one in bio-materials.
On the leather side, Dr Wilkinson
stressed that “links back into fashion”
would also grow and would set the agenda
for the British School of Leather
Technology for the next 100 years.
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Future investment
The speaker who followed,
Ian Scott (right), also
expressed a keen interest in
preparing
the
next
generations of leather
craftspeople.
He is the supply chain
and sourcing director of
luxury brand Mulberry,
which has its roots firmly in
UK soil, in Somerset in
southwest England, but is
growing,
nationally
and
internationally, all the time. Nevertheless,
Mr Scott said his company realised its
ability to maintain a proportion of its
production in the UK–along with
operations it has in Turkey, China, Spain
and Italy–was coming under threat, not
from pressure to compete with lower-cost
centres of manufacturing overseas, but
from the age of its workforce.
“When we analysed the situation we
realised that 50% of our workforce was
over 50-years of age,” he explained. “We
realised that, as much as we want to stay in
the UK, we might not be able to because
we knew recruiting a skilled, younger
workforce was going to be difficult. We
used to have a footwear manufacturing
industry in the area, but the labour pool
from that has mostly gone.”
Mulberry’s answer was to launch its own
apprenticeship scheme. The initiative
began in 2006 with government approval,
which means the company receives help
with funding while the young people
taking part receive a qualification they can
take with them if they move to another
employer.
For the inaugural year the company
advertised ten positions, for which 58
people applied. And with ten new people
coming through the door since then,
Mulberry has been able to set up its own
training centre where, rather than go to
college, the apprentices receive four hours’
formal tuition every Friday.
Hands-on training is the order of the
other days, with the new recruits learning
cutting, splitting, skiving and so on from
seasoned colleagues on the shop floor. And
with each apprentice enjoying exposure to
all areas of production, Mr Scott said he
had no doubt that the scheme was helping
Mulberry secure its future skills base. The
figure now for people over the age of 50 is
37%, and more than 30% are under 30.
There are 30 young people on a waiting list
to join the scheme at the moment.
“I’ve no doubt the apprentices will be
future supervisors and managers,” Mr
Scott told Beast to Beauty
delegates. “But the training we
have put in place isn’t just for
the apprentices. We’re keen to
upskill
our
whole
workforce.”
As a result of what
Mulberry has done, he
claimed there was still a
thriving
industry
in
Somerset, employing 250
people, which will be 300 next
year. He concluded from this that
the UK, more generally, could still
have a vibrant manufacturing industry but
that a “change in the environment” needed
to take place. He spoke about how
rewarding it can be for the people involved
in the production of beautiful Mulberry
bags to go into local schools to talk to
children about craftsmanship. “You can’t
do that in the retail industry,” he
commented.
Rapid fire
A series of quick-fire presentations
followed covering various aspects of
manufacturing leather and leathergoods
and looking after them. Paul Harris, who
recently retired from footwear brand
Clarks-kicked the session off.
His company took the decision to move
its manufacturing offshore several years
ago. Since making the move, the company
has been more profitable, he explained. “A
lot of factories were losing money,” he said.
This change in strategy has also put the
brand in a better position to start selling
shoes in important developing markets
such as India and China. Mr Harris argued
that, far from compromising on the quality
of
finished
products,
offshore
manufacturing has led to a series of
improvements.
“With the shoes being made in Vietnam
or Brazil, we are able to incorporate more
design,” he continued. “And at a technical
level, we’re even getting better sole bonds.
The people in those factories do a really
good job.”
On the downside, he explained that the
new set-up made it more difficult to
support “winners”, models that prove
popular in particular retail markets.
Retailers now have to order ahead and trust
their initial forecasts because the
manufacturing model Clarks now follows
means a longer time-to-market and speedy
replenishment of best-selling shoes is
seldom an option.
Looking ahead, he predicted that the
cost of producing shoes in southeast China
would continue to rise and that the
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industry there may follow the same path as
it had in Taiwan and Korea. “I’m one of the
people that can remember going to Taiwan
and Korea 20 years ago,” he said, “but
there aren’t many shoes coming out of
there now.”
He went on to say that, like other
consumer product brands, footwear
companies–who may, perhaps, be
transporting leather from Argentina to
Vietnam to make shoes that will later be
shipped to Venezuela for sale–may start
coming under pressure to reduce their
carbon footprint. He mentioned Galahad
Clark, a member of the founding family of
his company, who was dubbed an ‘Eco
hero’ by the Daily Telegraph in 2006 for his
efforts to green up the footwear industry.
Mr Harris recalled that Galahad Clark is
on the record as saying he believes more
shoes will be made in Europe, including in
the UK, in the future for precisely this
reason.
Right treatment
To address the question of social
responsibility and the leather industry,
Stuart Webster spoke next. He is director
of training in the UK of a programme
called Worldwide Responsible Accredited
Production (WRAP), which aims to
accredit industrial facilities that provide
their employees with lawful, humane, and
ethical work conditions.
This, too, is a supply chain question, he
explained, because brands to which
tanneries are supplying leather have to be
part of an overall effort that those
companies must devote to meeting the
needs of what he called “ethical
consumerism”. Every player in the chain
has to be a good partner to brands that can,
all too quickly, come under fire.
He went on: “Lots of brands have
already come under scrutiny for child
labour or forced labour (which is the new
slave labour). I have seen cases of factory
workers in Jordan who had arrived there
from Bangladesh on a three-year contract.
They had to work for two years just to pay
the agents who forked out for their air fares
and visas, but were there because, even in
the final year, they could earn more than
they would have done in five years in
Bangladesh.”
Producer beware
Testing centre Intertek’s representative at
the conference was technical knowledge
manager, Linda Gallagher.
She reminded delegates that, when it
comes to testing goods to see if they are
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ON DISPLAY
The following design students won funding from the Leathersellers’ Company to attend the
Beast to Beauty conference, where their design ideas were on display for delegates.
AMY CASTLE, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (FOOTWEAR)
KRISTIN CORNISH, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (ACCESSORIES FOR PETS, SEE IMAGE)
TONIA KATISOLOUDI, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (ACCESSORIES AND JEWELLERY)
BETH HUETT, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (CARVED LEATHER, SEE IMAGE)
FIONA CAMBELL, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (SUSTAINABLE FOOTWEAR)
LAURA QUEENING, CORDWAINERS COLLEGE, LONDON (ACCESSORIES)
ANCA ROBERTS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON (THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEATHER)
JAYNE NUTT, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON (SCREENS FOR INTERIOR DESIGN, SEE IMAGE)
JODY PARCHMENT, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON (FOOTWEAR AND ACCESSORIES)
CATHERINE NEVILLE, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON (APPAREL)
THOMAS KILEE, BRITISH SCHOOL OF LEATHER TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON
(LEATHER MANUFACTURE)
FURHAN MASOOD, BRITISH SCHOOL OF LEATHER TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF
NORTHAMPTON (LEATHER MANUFACTURE)
TANIA CARK HALL, UNIVERSITY OF MIDDLESEX (JEWELLERY)
BECKY EMBLETON, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE (APPAREL)
DAVID ALLEN,TRESHAM INSTITUTE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (FOOTWEAR)
NICK COOPER,TRESHAM INSTITUTE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (FOOTWEAR)
JONATHAN TOUT, APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME, MULBERRY (ACCESSORIES)
LUKE TUCKER, APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME, MULBERRY (ACCESSORIES)
JUN-WEI JAMES HSIEH, LEICESTER INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF FOOTWEAR (FOOTWEAR)
SATOKO TSUNEKAWA, LEICESTER INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF FOOTWEAR (FOOTWEAR)
Students' work on display.
A Beth Huett bag.
One of Jayne Nutt's interior
design ideas.
Luke Tucker and Jonathan Tout, Mulberry.
Boots by Amy Castle.
Shoes by Jody Parchment.
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Linda
Gallagher
safe, fit for purpose and accurately enough
described by the sellers for buyers to get
what they think they’re getting, it’s the
company with its logo on the product that
the law regards as the producer. This
applies no matter how many outsource
partners were involved in bringing it to the
point of sale.
A brand or a manufacturer can be held
liable for a long list of possible problems
with products–anything, Ms Gallagher
explained, that could cause a consumer to
bring the product back to the shop with a
complaint. A heel breaking off a shoe,
colour fading in the light, colour
transferring from a bag or upholstery onto
someone’s clothes, and decorative
components becoming detached and
representing a choking hazard to a child
were among the examples she offered.
Clean break
Pam Turbert, an expert in techniques for
cleaning leather garments and upholstery,
spoke next. She was representing dry
cleaning chain Johnson Cleaners, although
she had just left the company and was
looking for new opportunities for “giving
back to the industry” the knowledge she
had built up in 14 years at Johnson’s.
She pointed out that finding the best
way to remove stains such as blood or milk
from leather was not an exact science, and
that the team in which she had worked had
been successful because its three members
had amassed a combined total of 50 years’
experience in solving problems of this type.
They worked out, for example, which
additives to apply to replace the oils leather
loses during the dry-cleaning process.
Another trade secret she touched on was
that, in some cases, it helps to soften the
stain before submitting the soiled product
to the cleaning process. Ms Turbert also
held the role of customer service manager,
helping retailers understand why,
sometimes, labelling a garment as drycleanable had got them into trouble.
“I’ve learned that it’s about the quality of
the skin,” she said. “You can take the same
style of garment from the same retailer, but
WORLD LEATHER JUNE/JULY 2008
if one was made in Italy, one in China and
one in Turkey, the difference after cleaning
is incredible.”
Her relationships with retail groups
became so strong that some asked if they
could incorporate the Johnson Cleaners
logo on their hang-tags.
Byron Dixon (above), managing director
of leathercare consultancy Corium
Solutions, agreed that care and
maintenance of products was a big issue in
the leather sector.
For upholstery, he warned of the
importance preventing harsh liquids-any
substance with an excessively low or high
pH-from coming into contact with the
leather. Yes, there are expensive protective
sprays you can apply, but these can harm
the finish on the leather.
When Mr Dixon worked for footwear
brand Ecco, he recalled, he carried around
with him a chart to show which care
products went with which shoe group.
“Think of the beautiful aniline leathers you
often see on sofas,” he said. “And you have
sales people in furniture retail outlets trying
to sell you care products to apply when you
get the sofa home. But with aniline leather
you have to apply any protection before
use. If you don’t, no matter what you apply
later, the leather will fade easily in sunlight
and even water will stain it.”
Happy ending
After a presentation on his family’s
luxury handmade footwear firm from
William Lobb (see The Buyer’s View in this
issue), the inaugural Beast to Beauty
conference closed with a stimulating and
unusual audio-visual presentation from
Diane Becker (right), head of the footwear
and accessories design department at the
Polimoda fashion school in Florence.
She is originally from New York but has
been living and working in Tuscany for
many years. She has extensive experience of
working with footwear designers at the
luxury leather end of the business, runs her
own consultancy firm and carries out
trends research.
“I work with a product that is special
and local,” Ms Becker said, in reference to
the leather that comes from the vegetable
tanning consortium in Santa Croce. “The
important things in today’s culture are the
environment and sustainability, and the
26 tanneries in the consortium are
working together to offer something to the
global market that reflects this. Even
though they are small companies, they are
working together to do this instead of
competing with one another.”
She then showed subtle images and
played provocative music while she read
out thoughtful statements to reflect her
ideas on trends.
“We are attracted to ideas and ideals,”
she said. “But what is local can
demonstrate our desire for an experience
that’s authentic and privately significant.”
She talked of colours in a range of
leathers or in finished products becoming
“annulled” and “non-colours” doing the
work of creating depth and contrast.
“Liquid depths pull the imagination,” she
said enigmatically, and she spoke of our
need every now and then to enjoy “the
luxury of a moment well lived”.
In this context, she said it was essential
for brands to have a point of view, a
presence and a voice. “They must have a
DNA, and reflect that DNA,” she said.
“Advantage comes from creating a nature
that is unique and special, something with
excellent ingredients, but with certain
characteristics of its own, like a fine wine.”
Different consumers are interested in
different things, she concluded, and there
is a place for very individual products to be
offered. “But they have to be highly
communicative,” she insisted. “You can’t
just throw them out and hope they make
an impact.”
World Leather publisher, Simon
Yarwood, then closed the conference,
thanking speakers, session chairs and
sponsors. He said it had been one of the
most interesting events he had been to,
with first-class presentations on a whole
range of topics. He said he hoped to
welcome the delegates back for a second
Beast to Beauty next year.
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