Nordic partners prepare to bring fish leather to Mexico
03/10/2014
The story also has a Norwegian twist: the APLF discussion took place with Odd Arne Bøe, founder of OA Trading. Mr Bøe set the company up in 2006, taking scraps of leather from the furniture industry in his native Norway and shipping them to clients in Asia, who were keen to take the material and turn it into footwear, bags and other finished goods.
As the number of furniture makers dwindled, with more and more companies moving production to lower-cost countries, OA Trading reached a crossroads in 2010. Demand had been strong in Asia, but clients were reluctant to wait extra time and pay the necessary higher cost of material that OA Trading had to keep in storage until it amassed enough to fill a container. So the company turned its attentions to a new source of material, scrap from automotive leather, and a new market, Mexico.
It was a logical step to take in some ways because Mr Bøe’s wife, Liliana Fernandez, is from Mexico. Contacts with finished product factories and an agent there are strong and, in the course of the summer of 2014, OA Trading shipped 45 containers to Mexico.
When details of this activity came up in the conversation in Hong Kong, Atlantic Leather expressed a keen interest and the result is that OA Trading has begun to send fish leather to a select group of Mexican clients who have been attracted by the variety of colours and finishes available from Atlantic Leather and by the exotic look of fish leather.
OA Trading has worked hard to push the message that fish leather can have a similar appeal to that of more mainstream exotic leathers, but has, in her opinion, a stronger claim to be a sustainable product from a renewable resource that comes purely from a by-product of the food industry.
“We are not allowed to give names since our clients are still developing samples,” Ms Fernandez told leatherbiz in October. “It will be November, during the 44th edition of the ANPIC fair, when this leather will be released. We are hoping for a good response.”
She added that manufacturers in Mexico of all kinds of leathergoods, clothing and footwear, especially cowboy boots, constitute the target market. “There is a huge potential there,” she insisted.
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