At EKOńeu, producing high-quality leather accessories starts with the right leather selection; Our leather products only use high-quality materials in all our designs. These leather accessories are made from top-grain vegetable-dyed Florentine Vacchetta leather, combining all the elements of Tuscany and its traditions.

Our leather has more densely packed fibers making them stronger and more durable. Our manufacturing partner, an Italian leather factory established in 1972, located in Florence, Italy, is one of the very few that proudly carry on the old Florentine tradition of selling hand-crafted leather goods directly from its factory.

Our manufacturer started as a small leather shop in the historical Florence center where he designed and manufactured all the leather goods himself, supplying local retailers with his creations. In the early 1980’s he started developing private label merchandise for famous designers such as Dunhill, Bally, Valentino Garavani, Fratelli Rossetti, Cole-Haan, and most recently, Hugo Boss.

QUALITY CONTROL

With the selection of the leather hides, a tour of our manufacturer’s Italian leather workshop will show how the panels are cut, prepared, and put together. You will have the unique opportunity to walk through our leather storage section and smell the rich perfume of vegetable and chrome tanned leather hides.

Two levels of quality control are employed. The first level is completed at the tannery using electronic eyes that scan the size, color, intensity, and leather height. Once it arrives at the manufacturer’s workshop, it goes through other phases before going from raw material to finished product. Our manufacturer uses the extensive hands-on experience of leather craftsmen and women.

Each piece has a digitally printed red number on the back which indicates the number of square meters that correspond to the piece. The hides are run through two rollers equipped with an electronic eye that calculates usable leather’s precise area.

These numbers are added up to ensure the quantity delivered is the same as the quantity ordered and paid for. Every order is composed of hides that vary in size and quality. It is easy for the craftsman to determine the quality because it is indicated by the lines found next to the size of each piece.

• 1 line = high quality
• 2 lines = medium high
• 3 lines = medium quality

Our Master Leather cutter controls both the size and the quality before being put into production.

The color remains the same throughout the years during our production process to allow for coordinating combinations of bags, wallets, and more. When each roll is opened to confirm the square meters, each piece is then compared to an original hide we kept for just this purpose.

When referring to a vegetable-dyed process, the color saturation can change dramatically due to many factors; however, the contract stipulates that our manufacturer will accept only up to a 10% color variation in order to produce a homogeneous line of products for our brand.

Perhaps the hardest thing to quantify is the quality control of the leather itself; However, much of this is electronically controlled at the tannery only an expert eye will catch the fine details in a defective hide, defects that will make the difference in the integrity of the final product.

After the master leather cutter confirms the square meters, the visual quality, and the color conformity, he will decide if the leather conforms to standards of quality such as the smell and texture. This is something only an experienced artisan would be able to do.