Why Our Italian Leather Is Better

Here are the 7 reasons why the Who’s Who of the high quality fashion world chooses our same leather and tannery.

1. European Cows have a tighter fiber structure in their skin because Europe does not allow growth hormones to beef up the cows as quickly as possible. Instead of slaughtering cows at 15 to 18 months, when the skin has not fully matured, European cows are slaughtered at 22 to 24 months. Even some US tanneries buy mature European hides for the tight grain and because their skin hasn’t been compromised with genetically modified cattle feed.
2. Our Italian Tannery isn’t the best in the world, but we don’t know anyone who does it better. They have an excessively long and drawn out tanning process, which allows the natural tannins, fats and oils to perfectly and evenly distribute themselves throughout every square millimeter of the hide before it is dried. This increases the strength and integrity of the skin so there is no “weak link” area to tear.
3. Vegetable Tanned Leather is tighter and more dense because the heavy natural tree tannins pull the already tight grain and fibers even closer together.
4. Natural Fats and Oils are pulled out of the pores of the leather to start the tanning process and then that same beef tallow, which makes up a lot of high end skin beauty products in the world, is reintroduced into the same perfectly fitting pores that they were made in. The mixture of fats and oils is a proprietary blend of beef tallow and other ingredients like fish oil or mutton fat. They keep their perfected generational recipe secret. Most leather in the world uses synthetic oils instead of natural ones. Synthetics are not wrong to use, but they don’t fit as well into the pores at a molecular level.
5. Maintains It’s Form for longer and keeps that pristine and refined look.
6. The Smell is just simply better. Our normal high quality leather smells great, but this smells really great.
7. The Feel is just simply feels more buttery. You’ll want to use this leather as a pillow so you can have it against your cheek all night.

I’ve always chosen the highest quality Chrome tanned leather for Saddleback’s Classic designs because it is incredible and does exactly what I need it to to offer a 100 year warranty. We buy it from one of the highest quality tanneries in the world, about 15 minutes from our own workshop. But this specialty Italian leather is not just incredible, it is world class. Since it is very expensive to purchase, and then ship to our factory, it’s not for everybody because it makes the leather bags we make with it far more expensive.