Transparency
Producing and then communicating in a transparent way means giving the opportunity to understand the real quality of the products being offered on the market.
Today more than ever, consumers want to know what surrounds them and ask for more and more information on the products they purchase, in order to be able to evaluate their characteristics, their performance and the values associated with what they will buy and use. Also (and increasingly), they want to know about the sustainability of the production processes of the goods purchased.
Producing and then communicating in a transparent way means giving the opportunity to understand the real quality of the products being offered on the market.
Today more than ever, consumers want to know what surrounds them and ask for more and more information on the products they purchase, in order to be able to evaluate their characteristics, their performance and the values associated with what they will buy and use. Also (and increasingly), they want to know about the sustainability of the production processes of the goods purchased.
It is therefore essential to communicate the right elements for an increasingly informed purchase, navigating between many different marketing strategies that often emphasise a specific quality, omitting a great deal of other key information and thus misleading the consumer.
Leather is a modern, eclectic and meaningful material, as well as absolutely compliant with the highest parameters of process and product sustainability. Unfortunately, it is sometimes perceived (and communicated) as an ancient and static material, but it has unique characteristics, such as the sensation of heat that emanates from it, the durability of products made with it, its resistance over time, as well as the ability to acquire further value and beauty over time in the ageing process, in the style it transmits and in the history it brings with it. Click here to discover the greater technical-performance qualities of leather compared to alternative materials, both purely synthetic and of new generation.
Transparency means fair competition and correct communication.
All qualities still strongly appreciated by today’s consumers, who deserve transparency.
In Italy, thanks to Legislative Decree no. 68/2020, that which can be called ’leather’ and that which cannot has been defined. Alternative materials improperly defined using the term ’leather’ must communicate their true nature/composition with other terms. The decree takes up the definitions contained in consolidated industry standards and is accompanied by similar legislation present in other countries, both EU (France, Spain and recently also Portugal) and non-EU (Brazil), and European legislation on footwear labelling.
Italian Leather
Italian leather has long held a record of excellence that is recognised globally: this strong and consolidated leadership is built on quality, technological innovation, stylistic research and sustainability.
The beauty, creativity, technical performance and artisan tradition that characterise Made in Italy define a broader concept of quality for Italian leather.
Made in Italy leather means: selecting the best raw materials in terms of quality, origin and sustainability; controlling the most strategic phases of the production process to give the product the most suitable performance for the different intended uses and to verify the ESG performance; applying the most advanced industrial technology to our artisan knowledge.
Italian leather is thus synonymous with sustainable quality, essential for manufacturing bags, shoes, clothing, sofas and fine car interiors. The customers of Italian tanneries belong to very differentiated product ranges. The presence of tanneries with great artisan flexibility and others with highly standardised production allows us to serve the entire ’market pyramid,’ from top of the range leather goods to the low-cost sofas of large-scale retail trade, with a level of quality that is unique in the world.
When can leather be defined as ’Italian’?
According to EU customs origin rules, the substantial phase of the leather transformation process from raw to finished, which defines its origin, is the retanning, dyeing and fattening operation, which generally brings the material from the wet state (first semi-finished product obtained from processing raw hides) to the crust state (semi-finished product in the dry state). The leather finishing operations do not, in themselves, allow designating Italian origin, while the finished leathers obtained by starting the tanning process in Italy from a foreign raw and/or semi-finished wet leather are Italian in all respects (as long as all the other subsequent phases are carried out in our country).
The Italian (UNI) and European (EN) standardisation bodies have defined the framework related to the leather origin naming methods through the product standard UNI EN 16484 ‘Leather – Requirements for the determination of the origin of leather production’, which can be guaranteed through the relevant ICEC certification.