As the magazine celebrates its thirty-fifth birthday, we look back at its long list of achievements and pay tribute to the people involved.

Rich heritage

He points out that the magazine has an even longer heritage and stronger ties to the industry than this anniversary suggests. In fact, this legacy dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century. Until he launched his publishing business, founder, the late Ray Wilson, had run his family’s industrial machinery company in Liverpool. Edward Wilson & Son was incorporated in 1909 and earned renown for innovations including an automatic tanning machine in the 1920s. By the 1980s, however, the decline of the domestic leather manufacturing industry in the UK had begun severely to affect demand for locally made machinery.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a publication called American Shoemaking launched in 1901. In time, the company that ran it, Shoe Trades Publishing, launched other titles, including The Leather Manufacturer and World Footwear.

Company president, John Moynihan, had met and liked Ray Wilson and when Shoe Trades Publishing began to look to expand beyond the borders of the US, it wanted Ray Wilson to become involved. A fruitful partnership began.

At first, the focus was on World Footwear, with Ray Wilson running sales for that magazine (now wholly part of the World Trades Publishing stable) outside the US market on Shoe Trades’ behalf. A year later, a reciprocal arrangement came into place with Shoe Trades running sales in the US market for a new title that Mr Wilson had launched just in time for the 1987 edition of the Semaine International du Cuir exhibition in Paris. The title was World Leather. It was new to the market, but it had 164 years’ worth of industry knowledge behind it.

Fresh faces

World Trades Publishing chose carefully when putting a permanent editorial team together and relied at first on receiving a helping hand from industry veterans such as Iain Howie and Bob Higham. In time for the 1993 edition of APLF in Hong Kong, it unveiled a line-up that was to remain in place for the rest of the century and beyond. With more than 30 years in publishing and editing, David Buirski became the editor at this time and stayed in the role until 2005.

His involvement with World Leather continues to this day because he is now consultant editor, contributing articles and keeping a watchful eye on the planning and execution of every issue.

Others whose names appeared beside David’s on the masthead in 1993 were Dr Hubert Wachsmann as consultant editor, Richard Daniels as technical editor, and Walter Landmann as business development manager.

Machinery expertise

Walter Landmann, who died in April 2022, enjoyed deserved industry-wide recognition as an expert in tanning machinery. He had already been a close associate of Ray Wilson’s for many years when World Leather launched and had contributed articles about machinery innovation to the magazine from the outset. With the 1993 changes, though, he became a more closely integrated part of the editorial team and remained so until stepping down in 2017. His partnership with Richard Daniels was particularly strong.

As a formidable double-act, they published a number of books that are still in print and still in demand among the leather manufacturers of the world. Walter’s The Machines In The Tannery, first published in 2003, with a second edition appearing in 2013, soon became the definitive guide to the contribution creative engineers and machine designers have made to the leather industry. He also worked with Richard Daniels on a more general guide, The Framework for Leather Manufacture, which we published in 2011 and revised in 2019.

Green visions

Richard Daniels had had decades of hands-on experience of leather making in UK tanneries, rising to the role of ‘works manager’ (equivalent to ‘technical director’ today) at Stimpson Perkins in Northampton, before developing his own consultancy business. He insightfully called his consultancy GreenTech, long before most in the leather sector, and most other sectors for that matter, had begun to journey towards what we now call a green transition. During this time, Richard also worked for the United Nations International Development Organisation and derived great satisfaction from the projects he took part in, particularly in Africa and Asia.

After joining World Leather, he faithfully reported on bright ideas that leather manufacturers around the world had come up with, but never stopped developing his own initiatives, too. In 1995, using space in his own garden, he carried out initial tests to see what effect reed-beds could have in cleaning up tannery effluent. This idea, simple in its brilliance and brilliant in its simplicity, is now in place at a number of major leather manufacturing facilities around the world.

After stepping down as the magazine’s technical editor at the end of 2016, Richard Daniels continued to share his knowledge of the leather industry and his ideas about its future with a wide range of people. He had long been one of the tutors at the University of Northampton’s Institute for Creative Leather Technologies and, free from the time-pressure of magazine deadlines, now extended this to universities elsewhere, most notably China. In 2021, he published a new guide, ‘Making Leather, An Overview of Manufacture’, and immediately made it available free of charge to anyone who wanted to use it. He said he had enjoyed a career that had lasted 55 years, and counting, and wanted “to give something back”.

Global perspective

Consultant editor, Dr Hubert Wachsmann, was a big-name signing, too. He joined the magazine soon after retiring from the position of head of the leather division of chemicals manufacturer Ciba-Geigy, stepping down shortly before the merger that made that company part of TFL. He was elected president of the International Union of Leather Technologists and Chemists Societies in 1989 and made forging links with the rapidly emerging Asian leather industry a key focus of his tenure. Dr Wachsmann died in 2019.

According to David Buirski, the visionary stance that Hubert Wachsmann took over the rise of the leather industry in Asia was in keeping with the outward-looking mindset that World Leather had embraced from its very beginnings. “Other magazines covering the industry had started out as national titles, covering local matters, and had to adapt to the changes that have made the leather sector truly global,” Mr Buirski says. “World Leather was different. It was always international, always for the whole of the industry, and that has made an immense difference.” In keeping with this, he looks back with particular satisfaction at a special publication the team created in 1999 focusing on the global furniture industry and its use of leather. From the end of that year, he also recalls with pride the last World Leather of the century, which looked forward to what the leather sector faced in the new millennium.

Early in that millennium, in 2002, Ray Wilson died suddenly at the age of 57. It was at this time that Simon Yarwood moved from a sales role to become chief executive. He had already forged a strong sales network, working closely with Jenny Pickman in France, Cristina Sala in Italy, Friedemann Stehr in Germany, and Jim Haggerty in the US, all of whom were important cogs in the World Leather operation for years. Jim Haggerty, a veteran of the leather industry in the US, retired in 2016. The American Leather Chemists Association (ALCA) marked the occasion at its annual convention that year by awarding Mr Haggerty two prestigious accolades, the Alsop Award for outstanding contributions to the leather industry, and the Fred O’Flaherty Service Award for making a significant contribution to the association itself.

The magazine also received, and continues to receive, invaluable support in the international arena from Niran Raphi in Indonesia and Abdul Rab Siddiqi in Pakistan. The same was true of Alan Abrahams in Hong Kong and Roobik Khodabakhshian in Iran, who died in 2019 and 2018 respectively.

New century, new initiatives

In those first years of the century, other important changes that took place included launching leatherbiz.com, the industry’s first, oldest and best online news resource. Leatherbiz also offers an exclusive electronic newsletter, Market Intelligence. During those years, David Buirski handed over editorship of the magazine to well known industry figure Mike Redwood. In 2007, with specialist knowledge in the global supply chain, current editor Stephen Tierney took over. 

Soon afterwards, the magazine launched a series of one-day conferences under the title of Beast to Beauty, working in partnership with Christine Anscombe, now at research and testing provider SATRA, and the late Amanda Michel, who together ran a specialist training organisation called Leather Wise.

Tannery of the Year

Before the end of the decade, the team had devised and begun to roll out the Tannery of the Year competition and awards programme, which aimed to carry on World Leather’s long tradition of boots-on-the-ground reporting of what was really happening in tanneries on every continent. The competition also set out to provide a platform for leather manufacturers to publicise and celebrate successes they had achieved in environmental management and in corporate social responsibility, with many of their stories receiving an airing for the first time. 

Nothing To Hide

In 2014, we launched the Nothing To Hide series of essays, to provide accurate background information on the whole leather value chain. There are 15 essays in the series, which we are now in the process of updating for the 2020s. They have always been free to read, free to share and free to quote for anyone seeking to learn more about how the leather industry works.

At the end of 2018, the former technical director of leather manufacturer Clayton of Chesterfield, Matthew Abbott, joined the World Leather team as commercial manager and technical editor.

Leather and the Circular Economy

In 2020, the team launched a major new section in the magazine, Leather and the Circular Economy, with the aim of making it clear to people inside and outside the industry that leather fits perfectly into the circular economy discourse. Articles cover thought leadership, to flesh this argument out, and case studies, or ‘circular stories’, that demonstrate that circular-economy practice is already widespread in the global leather sector. In just the first two-and-a-half years of this project, the magazine has published a total of 88 Leather and the Circular Economy articles, with many more to come.

“It’s been a pleasure and an honour for World Leather to cover such an interesting and special industry for 35 years,” Simon Yarwood says. “We are grateful for all the support we have had down the years from our readers, friends and advertisers in helping us reach this milestone. It will be equally fascinating to see what the coming years bring for us all. Here’s to the next 35 years and beyond.”

Then and now. The cover of the first World Leather, published in 1987, and, 35 years on, the cover of this current issue.
Credit: WTP

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