Leatherbiz Blogs

Part Two of Puma’s suede tirade: we are still waiting for an explanation - 25 October 2012
Not attacking leather (much)Puma has denied that it is attacking leather. It says: “Puma is only looking at the environmental impacts that are associated with its operations, supply chain and the production of its products in an objective and transparent way and is trying to quantify those in order to make its operations, manufacturing processes and its products more sustainable. Puma hopes that it is also in the leather industry’s interest to support developments towards a more sustainable econ...
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Part One of Puma’s suede tirade: we are still waiting for an explanation - 25 October 2012
On October 8, 2012, with considerable fanfare, Puma took its sustainability campaign to the next stage by showing a direct comparison between the environmental impact of two products: the traditional Puma Suede shoe and a new model, to be released in February 2013, called the InCycle Basket.The InCycle Basket looks from a distance like an interesting enough product but I am not sure it will inspire the devotion that the Puma Suede has commanded for decades. When I interviewed designer of leather...
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Friend or faux - 17 September 2010
How quickly time passes. Apologies for neglecting the leatherbiz blog.A funny thing happened the other day that I thought I'd share.A public relations agency in Toronto got in touch to try to spark our interest in a new product that its client was launching, a soi-disant ‘faux leather’ (how I loathe the term), produced in China using a propylene-based elastomer from the chemical division of a major petrochemical firm.“Theleather[my emphasis] can be used in automotive interiors, footwear, sportin...
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The big day dawns - 29 March 2010
Hello everyone. It’s been a while. My apologies.It’s dawn in Hong Kong on Monday, March 29, 2010. Today we will learn the identities of the five regional winners of the Tannery of the Year Programme, and then the name of the winner of the global award. We were talking about this last night, and nobody in our team could quite believe that the moment had arrived. We were all a bit numb.This morning, I feel excited, so much so that I’ve got up earlier than I intended (this will be a long day). It’s...
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The devil wears Asda - 24 November 2009
Another autumn in Europe, another debate about the anti-dumping measures the European Union has had in place against imports of leather footwear from Vietnam and China since 2006. We have readers in Vietnam and China, so I want to say immediately that I don’t mean to come at this from a European point of view.In any event, there is no single European point of view on this: quite the reverse—the continent is divided over shoes.A vote took place in Brussels on November 19 among the nominated trade...
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Let’s hear it for Greenpeace - 20 June 2009
Everybody loves Greenpeace, one of the most famous NGOs in the world. The daring and headline-grabbing tactics it often uses to put across its message of fair play for the earth and all its resources usually only add to its appeal.At the start of this month the organisation turned the glare of its publicity machine on the leather industry in Brazil, insisting that the sector is partly to blame for illegal deforestation of the Amazon rain forests. That may seem impossibly remote from your busines...
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Bad news sells - 08 March 2009
Spring is showing itself in the northern hemisphere, and very welcome it is too if you like crocuses and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, which seems to come on the radio every day right now.Journalists are coming in for a lot of criticism these days, even more than usual. Apparently, we are making out that things in the global economy are worse than they really are, exaggerating bad news and scandal, ignoring anything positive, turning totally on its head the advice that Bing Crosby once belted out ...
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Fiction mirrors fact - 05 January 2009
Happy New Year to all readers and friends of World Leather and leatherbiz. We have lots of new, ambitious ideas to help us and the whole of the leather industry move forward in 2009. We know times are tough, but it strikes us that it's more important than ever for companies across this and all other industries to keep looking for new ideas, new markets and new niches.At the end of the Christmas holiday, I chanced upon a film on BBC television calledKinky Boots. Trust me, it's not normally the so...
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Welcome to the leatherbiz blog - 09 October 2008
Welcome the editor's blog, please come back later, a story will be added soon.
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