1. Be careful! Don’t let suede leather touches water or other liquid. Water, oil, liquid, or other types of stain is one of the biggest enemies of suede leather because , normally, suede leather is made from inner layer of animal skin and in the manufacturing process, there is no wax-coating method to shield leather surface from moisture and water, since this process will get rid of the most important characteristic of suede leather which is the soft touch. Hence, first way to protect your soft velvety suede leathers is to get them away from water and other types of liquid. What if you accidentally drop some on them? No worries, take a look at Number 4 below. 2. Avoid using them in rainy days. There is a saying that Thailand has 8 months of rain and 4 months of strong sun, well, I mean, it is sunny all time when it’s not raining basically, however, before leaving home and you’re not driving your personal car, when there is a chance that it might rain that day, we suggest you to not bring them. For your beloved shoes and bags,It’s always better to be preventive than to solve complexity, right? 3. Spraying some water resistant agents. Spraying some water resistant product on your suede leather is another great choice before beginning to use suede leather products. This will strongly prevent moisture or water to be absorbed Into the leather as well as keeping surfaces nice, soft and even. You can easily find this type of spray in any leather store or even online shop, the price would be around 200-300 THB, I’d say it’s worth it and after sometimes of usage, you should re-spray again to keep the leather properly coated. 4. I dropped some water on the leather, what do I do now? Sometimes when we put on our shoes or using our leather bags, accident happens and it is always unexpected, like, water spill for example, the best preliminary method is to shake it off real quickly. Do not rub or crush, or else the water will be sucked into leather quicker. Therefore, brushing or shaking it off is the best way to reduce any damage that could happen. When it is wiped or shaken off leave it dry. Sometimes you won’t even see any stains at all this is due to the fact that suede leather can resist water for a brief period of time without any damage. Though, this is all depending on the manufacturing process of that particular leather. 5. What do to with mud stains on suede leather shoes or bags? First thing first, never wash it! It may damage the bag or shoe structure and it will be very difficult to fix. Firstly, follow step 4 before and then after ward you cab brush off stains gently in case of some mild stains, simply use something like tooth brushe, sponge which you can easily find them at any store. This would sure help you get rid of those stains and smudges as well as rebalancing color tone to come back evenly. If in the case of heavy stain, please wait for a mud to dry off and then use special made brushes for suede leather or ETP brush (harder brush than tooth brushes) lightly scrub off stains and if there is something left still, lightly dip a towel into water or vinegar and wipe that area and then gently brush it off to lighten that stain. 6. Be careful about using generic kind of stain remover products Using those general stain remover agents which are produced for not only suede leather cleaning, not only it won't work, it may increase more stain by spreading them all over as well as can potentially damage suede leather products. It will be even more difficult to fix it. There are products which are made specially for cleaning suede leather, you can simply use and follow the instruction on products' label. 7. What if there is big mess on my leather? You should definitely bring your bags or shoes to a leather specialist to check what they can assist you with, for instance, a shoe spa, it may cost more but these people are highly experienced and fully equipped with proper tools to prevent further damages. You see, if we're correctly advised about how to take a good care of our beloved suede leathers, they will stay with us for a long, long time. Even though, taking care of suede leathers isn't as easy as taking care of plastic bags or fake leathers, real leathers will truly show your fabulous taste and support your character as well as showing how tidy and classy you are when it comes to how delicately and prudently you take care of your belongings.
Next article is coming up! We will tell you how to properly keep suede leather products so that you conserve their beauty for you for a long period of time.
1 Comment
As from what I’ve mentioned before that Suede leathers are made from inner layer skin of animal hide or as what people in the leather industry call Split leather which has a different characteristic from outer layer skin of animal hide, I suggest those who don’t have much experience in buying suede leather to read and study carefully before making a purchase. Anyway, all the finished leathers are natural products, they can't be as perfect as the manufacture products. 1. Tearing in As from we know that Split Suede Leather is the inner layer part of animal hide thus there is no outer layer to strengthen resistance like in the case of Full grain, therefore, the risk of being ripped in is higher even when the thickness of suede is as high as 0.8-2.2 mm. as well as the chance of being decayed and this could be a result from improper process of suede creation or it could be that the producers are inexperience. Then, before utilizing suede as a material for your finish products, the thorough check on tear in holes should be performed before hand, it is as simple as using your hand to stretch or pull to find out so you won’t get a beautiful looking suede leather but incapable of being put in used. 2. Faded color Normally, the process of suede manufacturing will involve with color dying and spraying for desired color and in a normal process, chemical coating at the end will not be used as we would like to keep suede leather touching smooth and natural, so, the chance of color fading in suede leather, especially, the one with dark color could occur and we should pay close attention to this matter. Hence, before deciding to purchase any suede leather, a check on how well the color sticks is highly suggested to be performed, this isn’t a difficult task though, since you can simply rub white paper onto the leather and observe how much color taint the white paper or you can request a lab test result to guarantee how well the color sticks to that lot of hide first. Anyhow, the color of suede will likely to be faded naturally but we can choose the acceptable level of fading as from your standard. |
Generally, suede leathers are being used like other type of leathers, for example, they're used for being parts of various kind of products like bags, shoes, sofas, clothes, gloves, curtains etc. Moreover, suede leathers are used as inner support part of some leather products as well, mostly in high quality, |
lavish, brand-name hand bags to create a nice, delicate, opulent touch to your hand more than other cheaper options which they might consider using fabric instead of suede.
Now, I guess you all know some more about suede leather and its nature already, if you have any questions in mind, any doubts or just simply curious to know more about suede leather, feel free to contact us in any channels that you're convenient with. In the next article, we will explain you how to properly take care of suede leather to make it lasts, stay tune!
Please subscribe and follow us to receive some updates and interesting promotions now!
Leather products are, in fact, promoting sustainability.
The discussions on various topics of global warming, climate change as well as sustainability have been widely put on the table in countless meeting rooms in both government sections and private ones. As a massive amount of awareness regarding this particular topic has been implanting on a global population for over a decade, there’re new studies and researches that come out every day stating facts and assumptions on how some kind of industries have a slight to huge effect on contributing to global warming. Countless of time, global warming has generally been linked to sustainability in which many ways has been tied to eco-friendly or “Go-green” aspects which is quite understandable, since eco-friendly and Go-green concept heavily represents the promotion of providing balance and stability to the whole eco system as well as promoting enlargement of numbers of plants who hold a leading role in a whole ecosystem. All this facts that have been studied, researched and announced to the mass aren’t wrong, but, however, there are some misconceptions and unfair demonization on some type of industries, who all of the sudden, have been given a bad name, and in this case, in particularly, is the leather industry.
The inevitable connections between Go-green, sustainable, eco-friendly, nature loving or even veganism and climate change and global warming occur and have been portrayed to the eyes of public for years. The effect of this idea is also displayed gradually among related businesses. There is no argument that all the studies and researches are incorrect, but, as we all know, there will always be the bright side of the darkness and conversely bright side of the bright side of the dark one, like Yin and Yang.
The leather industry is up there on the top of a list of business which is to blame regarding to this topic discussion. Frequently demonized by the media, leather business has always a bad image of being part of destroying our beautiful Earth. But, when one can stop listening to some one-sided biases for a little bit, open their hearts a little more as well as getting into logical discussion, it will be found that, in fact, leather products, DO massively contribute to sustainability, help reducing countless metric ton amount of waste as well as help saving lives of trees! Yes, it is true. These are not made-up facts; here are reasons and some aspects which may surprise you greatly.
Firstly, leather products promote sustainability, the unknown facts that are hidden by media and so-called “Eco-friendly” and “Green” companies who are just willing to sell their products. The point about leather products promoting sustainability is that leather products last longer in term of product life and in a sense of fashion, they are classics, you can use them much more often for a longer period of time, and moreover, in the sense of utility, especially in the winter time in colder climate, they can perform a better task of heat protection because after all, they’re products of nature. A true product of nature since prehistoric era up until a very moment.
Logically speaking, leather products are just by-products from one of the fastest growing industry in the world, meat industry. Imagine, world’s populations are increasing every day, food and meat consumptions are also shooting up sharply since meat consumption indicates wealth and abundance, people are consuming meat more and more every day, and to be honest, there is no promotion on meat consumption here, but realistically, we can’t stop and change people mind all of the sudden to stop eating meat, and since people still continue to consume more and more meat now, what will be left as a huge amount of waste? Certainly, all those hide! Isn’t it quite odd that we’ve all been told to reduce waste and recycle but in contrary we’ve also been told to demonized leather products?
That leads to a second point, waste reduction, Instead of having to get rid of those wastes and cause more pollutions, cost and energy to do so, why not recycling them and reuse them again? Eurofins BLC stated that 93% value of the whole cow is meat; hide of that cow will hold the monetary value of 7%, so basically, if the cow costs $100, its hide would cost just $7 and if there is nobody offers to buy that hide, they will likely have to throw it away to waste. In fact, if you’ve had a chance to visit one of museums which exhibits life of our ancestors or human in the past, they’ve been using up almost every waste from a death of one cow, buffalo or horse as tools, medicines, oil, or clothing and apparels since as far as we can study back into the days, consequently, by using leather products, you can significantly help using up and leaving less waste to this precious world of ours.
Last point of all, before believing in one-sided advertisement about using recycle synthetic fibers or bamboo fibers of being “greener” than using leather products, please reconsider the matter of production process, as from a survey from graduate student from NCSU and SKEMA , it is found that people focus almost solely on a consideration of materials used in manufacture rather than a production process itself, in other word, just looking at the materials of one particular products aren’t enough, the process of making that products may create harmful substance discharge or indirectly, unknowingly bothering the nature we wanted to protect in the first place, like chemical discharge coming out of manufacturing process or even natural resources we have to cut down more just for the sake of “Go-green” products isn’t that much better than leather products after all since leathers are also bio-degradable as well.
In summary, the point we’d like to make is that leather products are, in fact, truly sustainable and shouldn’t be blamed and demonized just by considering its name and its’ relation to meat and livestock industry, but in contrary, it’s an industry that truly help recycle by-products and reduce colossal amount of waste we have to throw away thus helping us to make the world cleaner with long-lasting, natural, bio-degradable products like leather.
Details
Author
Ken Kijja, - Digital Marketing Manager, TTN
Master in International Business Management and Web Marketing, University of Padova, Italy
Archives
March 2022
May 2021
December 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
Categories
All
5 Awesome Leather Crafting Ideas For A New Normal Era
General Leather Information
Leather
Suede Leather
World Situation Update