Here you will find details about modern marketing, innovation and CSR, along with links to many papers and articles I have written over the years.
Leather, Innovation and Marketing
Quite a curious cocktail you may think. But from the first days to the present days nearly every hide and skin that comes from an animal ends up helping us to live and enjoy our daily life. From the first sheet material that mankind had available when we stopped being apes and started to stand upright through to the material for the seating on a luxurious automobile leather has been there for us. Longlasting, improving in character over time leather has been a valuable, sustainable resource in a world that has become short term and disposable.
More about Leather : Look all the way down!
These pages serve as a guide to the past and present of leather, to its role in history and to its making. It also covers gloves in some depth. Mostly it is mid twentieth technology. There is also a lot of material about the glove industry.
Yet leather is nothing without great innovation and for innovation to succeed it needs to be integrated with marketing. So throughout these pages you will find items all about modern marketing and innovation, plus the strategy upon which it is all built.
Allied to this is the programme for LeatherNaturally! to be found at www.leathernaturally.org This promotes leather as a versatile premium material and help stop it sinking to the level of a commodity. Leather is a valuable, scarce but renewable resource. Its future depends on being correctly positioned in the marketplace.
Support is always being looked for from throughout the trade so if interested please look at the web site.
Originally a leather chemist I transferred into marketing while working with British leather specialists Pittards and as their Group Sales and Marketing Director helped formulate their global positioning based on innovative technical leathers. Early in my career I worked in S.Croce in Italy, Latin America, France for historic names such as Booths, Rosati and Barrow Hepburn and later for more contemporary ones such as ECCO, ADOC and Acushnet (FootJoy and Titleist). Now self employed, I am a Visiting Professor at the University of Northampton and write occasional columns for sports and leather magazines throughout the world.
I am also a Visiting Fellow in Marketing at the University of Bath School of Management. This is part time and helps me stay in touch and up to date: interaction with bright students is a great environment. I am a long standing Trustee of the Leather Conservation Centre in Northampton, UK.