- It's the weekend, I've
got the place to myself,
and I'm making a vlog.
(upbeat instrumental music)
My name's Tyler Condie.
I'm the founder of Rugged
Material and the lead designer.
I love to make travel
goods, I love to travel,
and I especially love to see
where people take our stuff.
They send us photos and we post it
on our Instagram account, which
is really fun and exciting,
but I'm making a vlog to
connect even closer with
the people who use our gear.
Hopefully this'll be good for me to share
tutorials and design ideas
and stories from our company
but also I hope that we
get feedback from you
and are able to make our
products that much better
and really enrich the travel
experiences that everyone has.
So, today I wanted to
talk about the difference
in the quality of
leather that you can buy.
And I want you to meet
Crash, the shop dog.
Hey Crash say hi.
So, the first and best kind
of leather that you can buy
is full grain leather.
When we go back into the
leather shop we'll talk more
about the different grades of leather
and I'll show you examples,
but for now I just want
to get the terms out
so that everyone can
be thinking about them.
The next is top grain leather.
The most common one that
you see is genuine leather.
It's also the most deceiving
as far as the grade that you get.
And then the worst one
by far is bonded leather.
It's so bad that you
don't see it very often,
but we're gonna show it
in here just for fun.
So when a hide comes off of the cow
it can be extremely thick,
like this piece is one
of the thicker pieces
that you can buy, and it's over or just at
a quarter of an inch thick.
So if I wanted to make a
wallet out of this piece
it would be way too
thick for us to want to
even attempt to make a wallet.
I mean, would you really
want that in your pocket?
So, what we have to do is
we have to split it down.
Now we can split things
here, and I'll do that
to show you what the process is like.
But typically we buy the
leather at the thickness
that we want from the tannery.
That has a lot of advantages for us,
because it makes it more cost effective,
and they can do a better job.
But also, it has a lot of
advantages for the tanneries
because they take the throwaway
from the splitting process
and they sell that as well.
So, this is what happens
when you thin it down.
Show you around the back.
(machine whirs)
Alright.
So, these two pieces
are what we just got out of the splitter.
Now this is the top
grain, the full grain part
of the leather that we
like and want to keep.
This is the throwaway part.
And that is what the tannery
sells and gets rid of.
Alright so, I wanted to
just kind of rank these
really quickly and I'll
explain why they're ranked
the way that they are.
As soon as I can find my marker.
Marker, marker, marker, in my back pocket.
Alright, so full grain
leather is the best.
Top grain leather is also great leather.
Genuine leather is not good really.
And bonded leather is scam level I guess.
So, the thing is that when
you have, when you have good
full grain leather like
this piece right here
you have a lot of variation in it.
So you get scars and fat
wrinkles and all sorts of things
like that, and so when
we're making something
out of leather we have to
work around all of that.
And the fact that we
have to pay for this part
of the leather but we don't
use it makes full grain
and top grain leather expensive.
But the thing is that the
difference between the strength
of this top grain piece and
this exact same thickness
piece that was split off of
this, so they went like this,
this full grain piece is
three to four times stronger
than this piece is here.
So there's a massive
difference between the quality.
Now the crazy thing is that
when we split this down
so that we can work with
it, and it's this is
the top grain that we're
talking about it's really good
but then there's all this waste.
So, when a tannery sees all
this waste they think oh
we need to figure out a way
to make money off of this
because that's a waste but
what they do is they sell it
to the people in China and
so this part here is called the split,
and this is called the top grain.
So what they do is they
take all of this stuff
and they pour a bunch of
plastic and waxes and oils
and all sorts of things whatever they can
and they make it look like this again.
And you know they can make
it look like pretty realistic
it's surprising how realistic
they can make it look.
I have like oh like this,
they can do pebbling just
like this, and they'll start,
they'll start with the
split that looks like this.
Here hang on let me, alright.
So they'll start with a
split that looks like this,
and they'll make it look
like this with the pebbling
just by pouring plastic on it,
and then also by embossing
it and stamping it
to look this way.
You think that this is full grain leather.
See, I have an example.
This is good strong full
grain leather right here.
It's amazing stuff, and it looks,
you can see the pebbling in it.
That is a pretty desirable
thing, but they can make
even the genuine leather look like that.
It's really surprising what
happens and what they can do.
So, the thing is that
for full grain leather
it's the part that is toughest.
So I don't know if they're
two l's on beautiful or not
but the reason that the full
grain leather is the toughest
is because that's the
part, oh geez, alright.
So the reason that full
grain leather is the toughest
is because it's the part
that's exposed to the world.
It's the outside of
the skin on the animal.
It gets, it has to be
toughest because there's
barbed wire and other
cows that are rubbing up
against them and that's where the hair is,
and it's just made to be really strong.
And that part of the leather
is woven really tightly.
If you were to look at the
fibers under a microscope
they would be woven really
tight zig zag and really dense.
Now if you look at the
part that's closest to
the muscle of the cow.
If we take this, how do these go together.
So, if we look at these
like this, this is the part
that's exposed to the world,
and this is the underside
that's up against the muscle of the cow.
This part of the leather is much softer
it's much stretchier,
and if you look at it
under a microscope the
fibers are very linear.
And so it's just not nearly as strong,
it's not nearly as
dense of leather either.
And that's why the full grain
leather is really strong.
It takes a lot of effort to stretch.
But when I have this split which came off
the exact same piece it
stretches and it rips
and it's a joke.
And this is what genuine
leather is made out of.
Technically it's real
leather because it came off
the same cow in the exact same spot
as this full grain leather.
But the problem is that
this is the throwaway
part of the leather.
This is garbage, it's not strong.
I mean it's a little stronger
than I am, but it really
is not anywhere nearly as good
of leather as the full grain.
So I can't, as hard as I try
I can't tear this top grain,
this full grain piece that we split.
That's because full grain
leather is more dense,
it's the toughest, it's
what's exposed to the world.
This is the good stuff,
this is the expensive stuff,
and the genuine leather is
just made to be as cheap
as possible because it's
literally the garbage
and byproduct of people making
something out of garbage.
Which is pretty innovative,
but it doesn't yield
a good product and you know when you buy
a genuine leather belt
and it only lasts you
six months this is why,
it's because it's the
garbage part of the leather.
And you know that's, it's
frustrating to see so much
genuine leather stuff
in the department stores
because we're just totally
overfilling all of our
landfills and that's the
wrong way to look at products.
That's just the quick
dime kind of product.
So, we've talked a lot
about genuine leather
and full grain leather,
now top grain leather is another story.
Top grain leather is still
the top layer of the leather
but it has all of the
scars and the imperfections
that come in the full grain,
it has all of those removed.
The reason they remove that
is because a lot of people
don't like to see the
pebbling or the scars
or the brands or things
like that, so they shave
just barely the top layer
off of that leather.
So, that's the difference
between like this leather
right here, I'm gonna zoom in again.
Alright, so this is full grain leather.
You can see that it has
some variation in it.
It's amazing leather and
this is what we use on a lot
of our bags but it definitely
has some stripes and marks
and things like that, still the toughest.
So, this is top grain leather.
This leather is just about
as strong as the full grain
but they've shaved off the
top and there's not nearly
as many defects in it.
The Europeans especially love
this look, this super clean
consistent look of the leather.
And some Americans like
that as well, but we see
with our sales that people
like leathers that are gonna
have some variation and
some color and little bit
of a patina and look really
unique and one of a kind.
So that's really the
difference between full grain
and top grain leather
is just the appearance.
It's really, it's good leather,
it's just not as strong.
So, we've covered full
grain and top grain leather.
The genuine leather is the garbage part
and you see it a ton,
if you can try not to buy
genuine leather whenever you can.
Because you know that
it's just not gonna last.
Now bonded leather is, I
don't even have an example
of it other than,
well actually I do have an
example of it one second.
Alright,
so bonded leather is the
equivalent of particle board.
Particle board is ground
up bits of wood all glued
and compressed together to make a board.
It's cool for what it is,
and particle board is more
successful than bonded leather.
Bonded leather is ground
up chunks of leather
glued back together
and it's just not good.
If you have the choice
what do you want your house
made out of, bonded glued
together, no real structure
in this or the real natural
wood that is you know
five times stronger
than the particle board.
That's what bonded leather
is, it's particle board
in the leather world.
Don't buy it.
Alright I just wanna
say thanks for watching.
I hope that you learned
something from this blog.
Sorry I'm not very good at it yet.
I will get better, and I
have a lot more to share
about design, about our company,
about how to shop better
and we'll be sharing a
bunch more travel tips
and things as well.
So, we just wanna say
goodbye and have a good day.
