I sat all yesterday through a series of presentations for industry University collaborative projects called KTPs. These are Knowledge Transfer Partnerships which are a very good way for business and Universities in the UK to collaborate. The companies contribute and the UK government then puts in quite a large amount and creates it normal bureaucracy […]

Terms like mergers and acquisitions, consolidation and vertical integration seem very alien in the leather industry but are now being discussed in main stream seminars such as the one at the Shanghai Leather Fair, “Coping with Change”. It is not totally new as the industry has been segmented in different ways for centuries and the […]

We are continuously told that the non-mainstream raw materials for leather only constitute 1% of the total leather produced in the world and should be ignored. Mainstream material includes bovine, sheep, goat and pig. Buffalo is occasionally added into the bovine figures. This leaves all the rest which includes such areas as: Kangaroo Deer Yak […]

On a recent short trip to the US I read in the newspapers that minus 30% was the new up in business these days and it is amazing how many of the companies I have spoken to since have used exactly that 30% figure as the statement of where they stand short of 2008. What […]

I have no idea if this will work but the above should either show you or link you to a wordle of my talk in Chennai. Done by www.wordle.net Imagine it is the first leather industry wordle. To see it properly it might be best to search for it using Mike Redwood at the wordle […]

With the world economy crashing around us next week in Lineapelle and Tanning Tech in Bologna is going to be of extreme importance to gauge the feelings in the market place. The impact on orders, on currencies, on over leveraged businesses will all start to come clear. And can we maintain any optimism for the […]