In October 1998, World Leather magazine ran a story on Turkish tanner and leather producer, Cengiz Sinal a modern-day Levantine trader who sourced baby buffalo hides for processing into finished skins for handbags, shoes and small accessories for his European customers. To recap, when Sinal learned that Italians were buying these skins as crust, he offered them the finished skins, at similar prices, which he processed from wet blue at his own tannery in Tuzla. At the time, Sinal noted that he seemed to have few competitors.
According to Sinal, after the article appeared, competitors swarmed and eventually located his source of farmed buffalo calves in Egypt. “Suddenly, everyone was buying these skins,” he said. “The price trebled in just 40 days!” It also helped him prosper: Sinallar Dericilik San ve Tic. Limited Sirketi now has two tanneries in the Tuzla district and Cengiz Sinal still travels the world to micro-source unusual and economically-priced skins. Currently on offer are goat skin; pony (hair-on); full-grain water buffalo (1.1mm thickness); and a superb two to three-month old milk-fed calf skin which Sinal says he has been seeking for eight years. “Italian luxury accessory goods producers are buying from the same source. But I am selling for half their price,” he added with a smile.
