Mike Redwood - Leather Industry Companion: Home Page

Date:

Germ Cells of Discomfort
The Ethical Marketing of Leather in Difficult Times
Presented to the International Council of Tanners, Bologna, Italy. October 2003

When many of us here today were at University in the 1960s life was good but not untroubled. Students then were deeply concerned about Vietnam and about apartheid, and it was sometimes hard to be a student rather than a politician. By comparison the 1980s and the 1990s were happier times, and we saw a surge of excitement.

The last few years has seen a return to the former feelings of disquiet. We wake up in the morning with a sense of discomfort. We have many issues of concern. Climate change, terrorism, genetically modified foods. We have to deal with dysfunctional governments and dysfunctional religions.

We are not sure whom we can trust and believe be it in politics or in science.

It is easy to think that our industry is too small, too insignificant to be involved in all this but the leather and leather using industries have always been of major importance. Until the late 1800s we were alongside agriculture and textile the biggest employers, and we were more useful as we were widely spread globally. Almost every country in the world has hides and skins, and people needing leather

As a Scotsman I always like to think back to Adam Smith, who wrote his famous book ”The Wealth of Nations” over 200 years ago. “The people do not get their daily bread thanks to the benevolence of their bakers, but to his selfish pursuit of profit”.

While today tanners may be a smaller segment by comparison our customers in sports footwear, in fashion and luxury goods, in automobiles are all high profile global brands for whom ethical and environmental matters are of vital importance. These are companies who have to marry social responsibility with the “selfish (and relentless) pursuit of profit”.

In marketing you can have a variety of concepts (1). Initially in the time of Henry Ford we had the Production Concept where the consumer was assumed to like wide availability and low costs. We then had the Product Concept, much favoured by tanners early in my career, and still a very strong element with marketing averse tanners. This argues that consumers will favour good quality, innovative products. “My leather sells itself” is the cry.

The Selling Concept is the area favoured by politicians. Get elected at all costs and then we can do what we like. This is the hard sell. The Marketing Concept is based on understanding your customers and through creating and delivering products to them more effectively than your competitors. Companies such as Wal-mart and Toyota excel in this.
In recent years we have seen a growth in an extended concept which we know as the Societal Marketing Concept, which involves delivering these needs and satisfactions to consumers while maintaining both the consumers and society well being.

Increasingly firms are expected to meet the expectations of society as a whole. They must have ethical and environmental policies, and they must back these with actions.

This mean we must take care as marketers in how we act and communicate, avoiding false or misleading advertising, high pressure sales techniques, and public relations that confuse. Just a look at the marketing around “bio-leather”, “environmental friendly leather” and the chromium debate highlights how much these are issues for us.

In dealing with these matters in the market place tanners have a number of options to choose from. We can be defensive, and like the tobacco industry fight for a position with lobbying, and legal dealing. We can be reactive and deny everything until it happens, and then try and put it right if we are found out. Alternately we can be accommodating and quickly respond as we see pressures arising in certain areas, as Macdonalds did when they changed their packaging. Most constructively we can be pro-active and try and stay ahead of societal demands, using social and environmental audits.

It is between these last two positions – the proactive and the accommodating that I would argue the tanning industry must be positioned.

About ten years ago I was privileged to be asked to talk to you about the branding of leather. In preparing for this presentation today it seems to me that in talking about branding leather we were talking about the wrong brand.

Consumers love leather, we see that all around. Automobiles sell better with leather upholstery, luxury leather goods do well in good and bad economic times, and many people have love affairs with shoe buying. Leather is a strong brand; it has no problems of recognition.

But the tanning industry has a problem. It’s the tanning industry that needs more branding: the bodies like ICT who have to stand up and represent the issues that face the tanner these days and make so much of the business financially marginal.

You may say that there is not much you can do to influence all these, but I would argue you would be wrong in spirit and in fact. Let me make some suggestions.

In many areas you would benefit from properly researched and well written papers, covering the environment, chemicals, and raw material. These need not be produced through the use of expensive consultancy, although at times some expertise may be needed, but rather I have in mind developing projects through the Universities.

We have a number of excellent institutions involved in research related to leather, where final year projects or even PhD projects could be supported or suggested. In certain areas we could go well beyond our normal relationships into material science, environmental science, and chemical engineering departments perhaps even journalism. The work would bring a new generation of young people into contact with our industry, with fresh minds and a modern perspective. Doing so would provide us with well documented position papers to help with taking and supporting decisions regarding our business. Many such studies are already in the hands of individual national organisations and their members, and so only need to be gathered together.

This information would form the basis of a large and expanded web site. Policies would be formulated and presented. The background papers would support these and provide further information to help others form their own opinions. As such the data collected would be an invaluable educational tool.

Another thing a strong trade organisation must do is promote education within and without the industry. As long as we ignore marketing and sell our leather as a commodity we damage our profitability and our future prosperity, so education is vital for development, quality and innovation just as much as we need it in an ethical concept.

Wherever there is child or slave labour there is a clear link with education. There is limited value in stopping child labour in leather and leather using industries if the only outcome is more children being forced into prostitution or into other more dangerous industrial activities.

Slave labour and child labour go hand in hand, as does home working. Home working has a long tradition in the leather and footwear industries, and was very strong in the New England States of the USA before steam power and increased demand for footwear lead to the advent of big factories. With outsourcing it is on the increase again, and it can have great community value in the developed as well as the developing world. It does create great opportunities for abuse, and as well as in the third world examples are to be found in the textile industries in the US and the UK, and in the leather industry in Italy.

On the leather educational side we have some fine outstanding technical societies. The American ALCA is about to celebrate its centenary, and the SLTC in the UK did so a few years ago. The SLTC award professional grades from Associate to Fellow according to members’ qualifications and experience. Can we not work with these bodies to raise the status of these qualifications and to add to them a requirement that those being awarded sign a statement not to accept, offer or be involved in any form of bribe or inducement?

These same bodies need to help us to monitor and define what “good science” is. With many of our trade bodies having gone into decline or become commercial it is hard for customers, retailers, the press, or consumers to know where to look for real truth in leather science today. Our many trade magazines have most usefully become increasingly technical, but readers do have to bear in mind the commercial pressures that may come from advertisers. Again we may say that our industry is too small to be affected by these things but who is there to argue the case of tanners against ridiculous legislation such as the EU REACH (2) proposals, which would stifle innovation, raise costs and damage the flexibility of our chemical suppliers and many, if not all of our tanners, for no measurable societal advantage. In the correspondence in one of our major trade magazines just a few months ago the head of an important German chemical supply company complained of “sensationalism which belongs to the gutter press and not in the proceedings of a technical society”.

With the environmental questions being asked of our industry and with the search for new tannages beyond chrome there is ample opportunity for mis-representation and obfuscation. This can be found in communications from all parties be they chemical suppliers, tanners, politicians and government bodies, and even some of our consulting and engineering bodies.

The problem for the tanning industry is that in the main margins are tight for tanners as we are trapped between inelastic raw material suppliers and very powerful customers, who are working in an environment where obtaining price rises from consumers has been very hard for over a decade.

If we take a defensive type stance then the record shows that others impose their own solutions on us. If we do not act customers will require and our governments will legislate. Over time we often discover such solutions to not only to have been unaffordable but also downright wrong.

This is the Paradox of the Unexpected Consequences. Take raw material as an example. No one worried a couple of decades ago when the environmental pressure groups succeeded in stopping the Inuit in Canada from killing seals and other wildlife. A recent examination of the situation gives a new picture . 45,000 Inuit lost their lifestyle after more than 1000 years; they stopped patrolling the forest and no longer were there to report illegal logging and other dangers to the natural balance. They moved into shanty towns, ate junk food and have become susceptible to modern city diseases like diabetes. Worse they have accepted the arrival of the energy companies since they will open up the land and create jobs for them. This environmentalists accept is a much greater environmental issue than the seals but there is no chance of the Inuit changing their mind now. They were forced out of their lifestyle and now they will not be deprived of this job opportunity, whatever the consequences to the planet.

It is when I see these facts and similar ones about the seals in Greenland and kangaroo in Australia that I am now convinced that properly controlled tanners and consumers are fully justified in using hides and skins from a wide variety of sources. Over ten years ago I was involved in writing an environmental statement for one major tanning group which stated that they would only tan “hides and skins which are bi-products of the meat, wool and dairy industries”. This policy remains in force today and I was very pleased with myself when I helped write it. Today I regret it as I think it implies that those who tan skins like seals and kangaroo are in the wrong, which is not the case. It is to avoid these errors that world wide tanners need a strong and thinking trade association.

And there is a second paradox we must consider. That is the Paradox of Disparate Unity. This is that in the highly mobile and connected society we have we are seeing unexpected groupings suddenly coming together to fight a cause. Anarchists and working class Americans concerned about job losses to the third world come together to demonstrate at the G7 summits. In the UK all sorts of groups march in London in support of the countryside, many of whom would not give each other time of day in normal circumstances. Called together by mobile phones, SMS and the Internet these are what we now know as “smart mobs”.

What this means is that pressure on our industry can come from any direction and very suddenly. We have to be prepared, and able to respond.

“To ascertain the solution to problems of mutual interest and to transmit these solutions to members”

In these times of disquiet and discomfort for society the powerful achievement of such a clear objective, in its widest sense, would do all the participants in the leather industry worldwide a great service.

Notes:
1. Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, International Edition, 2000 Prentice Hall, and his new European Edition 2003
2. REACH Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals