For Tanneries

For vegetable tanneries

If your leather is good enough to be asked for by name, we would like to put it in front of the people who work it.

Where your leather ends up

India's leather buyers are not all overseas

Most Indian tanneries sell the way they always have: in bulk, to exporters, factories, and overseas brands. The leather leaves in pallets, and the name of the tannery that made it rarely travels with it. The person who finally cuts into it has no idea whose work they are holding.

There is another kind of buyer here at home, and their numbers keep growing. Independent leatherworkers. Small workshops turning out ten wallets a month, not ten thousand. Bespoke shoemakers and saddlers. Design students. Makers who care a great deal about which leather they cut into, and who will come back again and again to an article they have learnt to trust.

These are not bulk buyers. They order a side at a time. But they choose deliberately, they talk to each other, and word travels quickly among them. A tannery whose leather earns a reputation in this circle keeps it for years.

Full grain buffalo vegetable-tanned crust leather, natural | India Leather Supply

How this works

We buy it, we sell it, and your name stays on it

We are not a broker, and we are not asking for stock on credit. We buy outright, hold the inventory ourselves, and sell to end customers from our own site.

Retail logistics. Splitting stock into pieces people can use, photographing what we actually have, writing the descriptions, GST invoicing, packing, couriering, and answering the questions that come afterwards.
Grading, honestly. Every piece is inspected and graded by us before it is listed, and the customer is told exactly what they are getting.
Your name on the listing. We sell leather by its tannery and its article name, not as anonymous "genuine leather". A maker who takes to one of your articles asks for it by name.
A home for short lots. Surplus, short runs, discontinued shades, and honest seconds are not a nuisance to us. They find buyers here.

What we don't ask for: exclusivity, credit terms in our favour, or a container-sized first order.

Sheong Shi Tannery cognac brown polished and milled leather | India Leather Supply

A tannery can spend forty years making excellent leather and still be unknown to the people who work it.

What we ask

We are careful about what we put our name to

We turn down more leather than we take. That is not a slight to anyone offering it. It is the reason our customers trust what they buy from us. If you can meet the following, we would like to talk.

Vegetable tannage first

Vegetable-tanned leather is what our catalogue is built around and what we are actively looking for. We do carry other tannages, but they are not what we are chasing. Whatever we list, we describe by its actual tannage, so a leather that is retanned, blended, or finished in a particular way is named as such on the page rather than left to the customer's assumption.

We inspect before we buy

We ask for samples first, and we test them ourselves. Nothing reaches the site sight-unseen, and we do not list from a catalogue photograph.

Honest grading beats perfect grading

We do not need every piece to be flawless. We buy TR (tannery run), we buy scarred and branded hides, we buy short lots, gladly, and we say plainly on the page what they are. What we cannot work with is A-grade description on TR leather, or defects that turn up only after the crate is opened.

Proper paperwork

GST registration and clear invoicing. Where relevant or available, documentation of tannage, finishing, and effluent compliance. Our customers increasingly ask where their leather comes from, and we would like to be able to answer.

Be willing to be named

We put the tannery's name on the product page. That only works if you are proud enough of the batch to have your name on it.

The process

How it usually goes

Tell us what you make and send a sample. We test it ourselves, on the bench, mostly to see how the vegetable tannage behaves under the sort of work a customer will put it through. It does not take us long, and we will tell you honestly what we found either way.

If it holds up, we talk about what you have running. We would rather fit around your existing production than add a special job to your schedule, which tends to suit both sides. A steady article we can list and restock is what we hope for. A single unusual lot is just as welcome, and those are often the ones our customers watch out for.

Get in touch

Tell us about your tannery

Share your details below. Include your location, the articles you produce, the tannage and typical substance, and the shades and finishes you run. A link to a catalogue or photographs helps us reply faster.

Prefer email? Write directly to contactus@indialeathersupply.com.

We would rather list less leather and be right about all of it. If your leather can stand being described honestly, it will do well here.