Kering will share Gucci and Bottega Veneta leather breakthroughs
03/12/2014
Giving a keynote speech at the 2014 New York Times International Luxury Conference in Miami at the start of December, Mr Pinault said two of the group’s brands, Gucci and Bottega Veneta, had been working for three years on specific projects to improve tanning processes.
Following collaborative development with suppliers in the tanning industry in Tuscany and with a university in Germany, he explained, Gucci has pioneered a method to remove all heavy metals from the tanning process, and at the same time, Bottega Veneta has developed a chrome-free tanning process.
“Both approaches have been made without compromising on [finished] product quality,” Mr Pinault told the audience in Miami. “They also generate a significant reduction in water use, and energy consumption is also decreased because the new processes take less time to complete. We will be making this know-how available to everyone, including our competitors, as we want Kering to lead the way.”
He confirmed in conversation afterwards with fashion director and chief fashion critic of the New York Times, Vanessa Friedman, that Kering intends to share on an open-source platform the work its brands and their partners have done on developing these new tanning processes. “We are still implementing the new techniques in the Gucci production of leather,” Mr Pinault added. “We have reached more than 20% of the total volume and, as soon as it’s stabilised, we will give it to anyone who wants to use it.”
He said that Kering began looking at ways of making tanning processes more sustainable three or four years ago and consulted widely among tanners and leather chemical suppliers about the possibilities of keeping the qualities and appearance of leather the same without using heavy metals. “The answer was, ‘it’s impossible, it’s never been done’,” François-Henri Pinault said. “The reality was that no research into this had ever been carried out. We took up the challenge with Bottega Veneta and Gucci to work with the university in Germany and with our suppliers and we found exactly what we were looking for.”
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