Frank Boehly to step down as CNC president
Nine years after taking up the presidency of France’s Conseil National du Cuir (CNC), Frank Boehly has announced that he will step down from the role in 2024.
Mr Boehly made the announcement at the end of the Sustainable Leather Forum in Paris on September 11. He said the event would go ahead again, for the sixth time, next year but that CNC would have a new president by then and, as a result, he would not be there to greet delegates.
He became president of the national leather industry body in 2014 after more than a decade of running the French business of German leathergoods and footwear group Salamander. He said from the outset of his tenure that leather, leathergoods and shoes represented “one of the flagships of the Made In France movement”.
In comments he made on announcing that he was stepping down, it was clear that Frank Boehly still holds this view. He said that the leather sector was essential for adding high levels of value on home soil to the hides and skins that the French agricultural industry produces each year and that he was optimistic about its future.
“Of course there are challenges,” he added, “and the industry can seem vulnerable, but we can say after an event like the 2023 Sustainable Leather Forum that there are many courageous solutions to those challenges being discussed now and I hope our efforts to implement them will speed up. There is also a growing cohesion in the industry and there are many of us who are working together to defend a material that is renewable, repairable and responsible.”
Image shows Frank Boehly (right) at the 2023 Sustainable Leather Forum.
Credit: Conseil National du Cuir.
