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Comment by stonogo | Hacker News Reader

I'd be interested to know how much of this has to do with the dilution of the meaning of 'leather' in terms of consumer goods. The market is flooded with garbage products, which are produced by slicing a thin veneer of leather and gluing it to a plastic backing, which is then sold as "bonded leather." It's gotten so bad that full-grain leather products are exceedingly rare.

Since 90% of "leather" products are such awful garbage, it's not surprising to me that consumers have abandoned the sector en masse.

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I had a really awesome leather belt that I got when I was 15. I stopped wearing it when I was 30 because my weight finally out outgrew the belt. Still have it. It's no worse today than it was when I got it as a teen.

I go through about a belt a year now. Because I always seem to end up with this crap you describe. Even if I try to avoid it. Guess I need to do a better job looking... Or just lose some weight so I can use that same belt for another 15years.

The last time I got a couple of new belts it was from a little craft-type belt place in one of the London markets. They're great.

You might also have luck checking out cobblers. Some of them make belts and other leather goods on the side.

Check out Tanner goods. Definitely buy it for life belts, wallets, etc.

Life belts?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-belts/s?k=Life+belts

Belts for life??

The person's referring to the general term "buy it for life" - products that last a lifetime or longer. (https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/)

Just FYI, if you do mean what the sibling replies say, a "life belt" is a flotation device in the shape of a belt. Refers to a "life jacket".

"buy it for life", belt. Not buy it for, "life belt."

The list makes it really hard to read that way with parens. It parses like this to me:

  Definitely buy it for (life belts, wallets, etc).

Hah! That never occurred to me until you pointed it out.

Could just order some from China(1). Have to read the description carefully tho. Usually anything under 15USD not worth buying and over 30USD you're overpaying.

(1) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32816882257.html?spm=a2g0o.p...

Wearing one now. Good quality at a fair price as I haven’t had to pay western landlords and bankers via land rent.

On the other hand, if you're in the US, your belt's shipping from China was paid for entirely, or at least heavily subsidized, by American taxpayers.

(Not sure how this varies across other non-US western countries)

What about Canadians, based on our close proximity and depending on the specific logistics, might you guys be subsidising us as well?

qwsc was referring to the almost-free international postal rates for parcels that China received from USPS when it was a struggling exporter decades ago.

As in, lower than domestic parcel rates inside the USA, typically in the range of $1 - $2.

I believe Trump mentioned considering re-negotiating that deal recently, which nobody has objected to.

It's not a subsidy specific to China. It's an international agreement to charge certain international rates for postage. It applies only to packages under a certain size and weight.

But it probably should go away. It creates this weird imbalance where shipping things from China to the US can be cheaper than shipping something to your next door neighbor.

NPR's planet money had an informative and fun episode on the topic. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

I’m in the same boat - I have a Nautica belt that I bought in 8th grade (37 now) that I still wear daily, though it is getting tighter it works like new. The buckle holes are not even noticeably stretched.

As a tangent, Vivobarefoot is a shoe company that makes very high quality leather shoes. I bought a pair of their brown low-tops and have worn them everyday for work for 4(+) years. Other than looking slightly worn they function as new. No affiliation, just impressed with the craftsmanship.

Good leather is good.

> As a tangent, Vivobarefoot is a shoe company that makes very high quality leather shoes. I bought a pair of their brown low-tops and have worn them everyday for work for 4(+) years. Other than looking slightly worn they function as new. No affiliation, just impressed with the craftsmanship.

I've bought Vivobarefoot (mostly when they're on sale) for over 7 years now, and the build quality of their shoes are really hit-or-miss — while the leather doesn't wear, some of their soles tend to puncture or flake within months.

The pair I'm currently wearing daily, their Soul of Africa Gobi, has been going strong for over a year now.

Their Stealth and Evo series of running shoes (not leather) are rubbish. My Evo died after 131 km/81 miles of running — normal running shoes should last at least 2-3 times of that.

I wonder if the country of production plays a part in build quality.

My guess has been that their small scale makes designing for long-term durability challenging.

My Evo also got trashed pretty quickly, but I had a pair of Neo that lasted around seven years before I finally wore through the sole. Have a couple from their Primus line for the past year or so that seem to be holding up well so far.

Yes. I have a leather belt from highschool (buckle is stamped spain, have no idea how i got it and my parents can't remember)... it has a weathered look to it, but is perfectly fine (i use it today still).

After getting fed up of of cloth like deteriorating "leather" belts, recently i looked closely and ended up with a timberland (stamped india) "genuine leather" (means not leather again) belt. In comparison, the timberland used stitching to attach the buckle while my old spanish belt used two hefty rivets to attach the buckle.

I think we do still make things excellently... it's just for the 1% (maybe when i was young in the u.s. i was the 1% in the world at the time).

As you sorted, geniune leather is one of the lowest rung of material that is legally able to be called leather.

Here is a quick overview of leather grades:

https://www.heddels.com/2014/06/overview-guide-leather-grade...

I have a couple of leather belts (one brown and one black) that I got from https://simpleleatherbelt.com/

I highly recommend them. These belts will last a lifetime.

I second the recommendation of A Simple Leather Belt Co. I have a brown and a black from them, and they're extremely well made. The user interface for designing your belt is also quite clear.

Simple Leather Belts' prices are too high too!

I've been in the market for new belts for a year now, so the glut of hides is good news. Time to stock up for another century!

I've had very good full grain leather belts in the past. Now that I know the market situation I'm going to search for a big (cheap) piece of full-grain cowhide and cut my own damn belts out of it. Belts aren't hi-tech. It isn't as if we're talking about making a 5-nm chip here; more like "cow chip" tech.

I'm in Texas now so there are probably cowhides all over the local flea markets and wholesale shops.

There's more that goes into production than material costs. Seems like a deal compared to crap that will fall into disrepair after a year or two

Most anyone can make a nice good-looking belt. With the material price down to zero, now is a good time to learn:

"How to Make a $90 Belt for Only $23":

https://www.primermagazine.com/2012/learn/how-to-make-a-90-b...

discusses where to buy leather and tools (that will last the rest of your life) and how to make the belt. Also...

"How to make a $100 belt on the cheap": https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/k6uro/ho...

where you'll find tips on finishing the leather too.

The website is a study in how not to do a checkout process, even on simpler mom-n-pop WooCommerce sites.

- - - -

> TIP CUT C125

> Round

> English Point

> Taper

- - - -

> Belt length:

> * DO NOT USE YOUR PANTS SIZE *

> 25

> 26

> 27

- - - -

It's better if you:

1. Explain which options are recommended for what kind of customer, or which options go together better in a set.

2. Don't expect checkout customers to work in your leather belt shop.

What does C125 mean? Why is it prominent in the checkout?

If you're not meant to use your pants size, how about a sizing guide?

C125 refers to the belt model, Clinch 1.25

The tip cuts make sense to me. You can either go rounded, have a point, or go with a taper. The image changes based on which one you choose.

They have a sizing guide on the product page where they use your old belt as a base for measurement.

As for point number one, I feel like that's a matter of preference, specifically because fashion is subjective.

I mean, I agree with the sentiment of your comment, specifically they could definitely do more user friendly things, but I figure most of their customers are into bespoke products and are okay with doing research on their own or are informed.

"Clinch 1.25" means something to the website owners and to their more dedicated customers.

I'm not that person though- I just clicked on a picture of a belt on their homepage, so "C125" is a random string to me.

Is "C125" the thing I want to order or the opposite of that thing? I forget.

I also wouldn't know they have a sizing guide on their homepage, because I'm on their checkout page already.

I know that sounds silly (and pretty much incompetent of me as a buyer), but there are a lot of eComm sites, a lot of places to buy belts, and busy lives for customers.

You either hold the customer's hand through checkout, or you bleed abandoned carts.

I found a comment online that goes:

> Tapered

> - easier grip to pull/cinch the belt

> - easier to get through the loop Rounded

> - 5" less excess going through the loop.

> - great if you are sharing belts (if the smaller person is wearing the belt in its tightest setting, they won't have the excess talked about in first bullet point)

Little notes like this would go a long way during the checkout process.

The image on this page updates with the colour and tip cut as the user chooses the option: https://simpleleatherbelt.com/product/belt-cinch-1-25/

I personally thought that the tip cut might have been more of an aesthetic preference than one of practicality.

It's funny, I have a similar story: my mother bought me a leather belt as a child around 1995. It finally bit the dust a few years ago. I bought a belt from the same company (Land's End) and it barely lasted a year. Then my aunt got me one from Duluth Trading Company for Christmas. That was about two years ago and it's shown no signs of stopping yet.

Lands End used to be pretty much a go to for me. After all the Sears and private equity stuff that went on I became increasingly disillusioned with their quality. I still get clothing from them now and then but quality generally has gone downhill.

lifeProtip- Goodwill prices all belts the same in every store I've been to. They're like 1-3 dollars and there's usually a couple real leather ones on the rack. I have several just hanging around now.

I recommend Hank’s Belts online. I bought two. First one with a blemish (that I can’t find) for half price and a regular one for full price. Both have lasted me 3+ years now.

$60 is a stiff price for a belt when the value of leather is apparently $0. Hank's Belts hasn't heard the news yet, I suppose.

When the price of materials is low enough, like leather, you are paying for the decisions the creator made, use of their time, tools and facilities, and distribution convenience.

As an extreme example, a napkin sketch by Picasso is not valued relative to napkins.

If the creator makes a belt just the way I want it, that’s worth a couple hours pay to me.

That's why charging for software is crazy. Electrons are free, you can get them literally anywhere.

You could always just buy a belt blank [1] and a buckle. Not a terrible lot to a belt.

[1] https://theleatherguy.org/collections/leather-belt-blanks

I get American made leather belts from here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dan-Freemans-Leatherworks/361... costs about $30-35. They last forever.

I didn’t appreciate how durable leather was until four years ago when I was recommended some quality men’s dress shoes on eBay.

The shoes were $100, because they retail for $400-$500, but when I purchased them they were 10 years old and in good condition. I have since been wearing them quite regularly, and they still look as new as the day I got them.

I used to spend $100 a year on typical men’s shoes, not realizing how wasteful it all was. Leather is an amazing material when it is cared for, and it can be a very eco-friendly clothing solution to our throwaway culture of petroleum products.

I am now sold on quality leather shoes, because they are in fact cheaper and better for the environment than any petroleum shoes when properly cared for (for the simple fact that they can last 10 to 20 years).

What brand of shoes did you get? I don't have any good dress shoes that don't feel cheap.

Allen Edmonds. You have to make sure to get your feet sized properly. I.e. after a not-cold day of work with a lot of standing/walking, use a Brannock device to find your #-letter combo, e.g. 10D. (This is the same advice for getting your proper ring size :))

The cork soles and the leather will slowly morph to your foot shape as you use them, so they get more comfortable as you use them. My most comfortable pair had its last manufacturing run in ~2005 (“lauderdale”).

Suitsupply also has a very nice shoe collection made from italian calf leather for a reasonable price.

Sneakers for $179 and dress shoes are priced at $249.

Like you said amazing quality shoes last for several years when given proper maintenance.

Business attire is also top notch from this brand competing with similar Brioni suits for a 1/3 of the price.

https://us.suitsupply.com/en_US/shoes

If you happen to live in SoCal, Wil Leather of Abbot Kenny is legit leather. They're expensive, but I have a few of their things and I love them dearly.

Go to Etsy.com. It's great for leather products. I bought lots of belts from brand names growing up, and they all quickly fell apart. Then I learned about full grain leather. I talked with a local person I found on Etsy, provided the measurements to the center hole, chose a solid stainless steel buckle from their selection, gave them the measurements for the width of the belt, and they cut one from some black, full grain, vegetable tanned leather. I've had the belt for years, wear it all the time, and it's like new, but just keeps looking better and getting softer.

Once again, go to Etsy and search for full grain leather belts. I spent about $70 on mine. This is one of the markets where you'll get a much better product working with a local craftsman than shopping with a brand name.

The problem with Etsy is these days it's flooded with Chinese sellers hawking the same products they would on Amazon but at a markup.

I hear this all the time, and I'm sure it's true in some product categories, but it has not been my experience at all, at least not lately. Go search "full grain leather belt" on Etsy, do the tiniest bit of research on the sellers on the first-page of results, and tell me I'm wrong...

Try searching leather goods on Amazon or Ebay. 95% of the results aren't - they're leathercloth, fake leather, bonded leather, PVC, but use "leather" as a headline keyword anyway. Amazon don't care despite it being borderline fraudulent.

Then you see a quality brand you remember from 40 years ago who once sold proper thick hide belts. Comes for a similar premium price that has you thinking it's the real thing still. You can have something that looks the same - for a couple of years. Except it's bonded leather, with a cheaply plated buckle, made in China or Vietnam.

The leather goods shop, that sold only pukka items, in town is long gone. As is the shopkeeper who could advise which leather would suit your need best, and order in special niche items. There might be a real maker somewhere online, selling at artisan (ie absurd) prices. You may never know it as everyone else is trying to imply their crap is that too.

So how do we solve this problem of uninformed decision (even when the customer tries his best to make an informed choice around choosing actual leather)?

Something like a site with "leather teardowns" on products?

Alternatively, what would be a good non-invasive non-destructive method to detect its actual leathernness? Something like Atomic Dielectric Resonance scanning? It may sound absurd to construct an ADR scanner to buy a leather item on a sporadic basis, but the device could be rented (for a miniscule price, with a deposit in escrow to ensure return) say at a bio-shop... Or somehow build it into a phone, using its radio spectrum?

I had a similar experience although the cheap cast zinc on the buckle finally failed. The leather is still in pretty decent shape, despite ~15 years of abuse.

I bought a pricey belt from Kenneth Kole made of this crap without knowing better. It was garbage within months. I learned my lesson and bought a proper leather belt from who knows what brand from Amazon for a fraction of the price, it's doing great years later. My parents had a horrible experience with made in china "leather" chairs. They had to reupholster them within months. You have to be very careful buying leather now and do hours of product/brand research to ensure you're not getting a lemon. At my hourly rate, that costs me way more than the product itself for anything less than large furniture items. I'm a lot less likely to buy leather goods as a result.

The brand names are the worst in this regard. I think pretty much any Kenneth Kole leather item I have ever seen in the last 10 years has been fake leather; definitely do stay away from those.

There is a grading system for leather. "Genuine" leather is a deceptive marketing term designed to sell shit leather as quality.

https://joojoobs.com/leather-grades/

> https://joojoobs.com/leather-grades/

Thanks for this; I had no idea that Genuine Leather wasn't a good thing, but I did have my suspicions as so many products seem to use the designation where the quality doesn't seem to be there.

Will be making sure to look for full-grain leather from now on (ironically, I thought that "Genuine" designation was better).

Adding on: I've been looking for wallet suggestions on Reddit, and chanced upon North Star Leather's posts on how "Grades of Leather" was made up for marketing purposes [1][2].

I think those articles, and his Reddit comments [3], are worth a read to get an insight into how leather workers see this.

[1] https://nstarleather.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/the-grades-of-...

[2] https://nstarleather.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/genuine-leathe...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/user/nstarleather/comments/

Yeah, there are still plenty of quality leather products out there, you just have to look for "full grain leather".

That doesn't work, I'm not sure it ever did. Yeah if something says full grain then it's full grain, but if you want corrected grain calf no grading system can help you. Corrected grain calf is what most people wanting a leather jacket that doesn't look like a biker or a statement piece will be thinking about.

This is a great point. I'd be interested in seeing some data where words/definitions/"generic trademarks" are better protected. For example, I remember reading something within the last few years about the FDA considering cracking down on companies using "milk" in non-dairy products like almond milk, soy milk, etc.

It's almost a tragedy of the commons where there is a generic trademark that isn't protected, or maybe in the opposite case where everyone colludes to dilute the generic trademark to increase profit margins. Like using "blueberries" that aren't real blueberries but just made up of sugar and some artificial ingredients.

When I sold furniture 15 years ago, one of the selling lines was buying leather now is a great investment since the meat industry puts so much leather on the market it was super cheap. Not sure if it's still true or if it ever was.

A few years ago, I bought a hand made leather wallet from a leatherworker in Germany. It has a beautiful patina now and is in perfect shape. Quality matters.

Wallets are a very good example of an industry overrun with inferior "leather-based" products. "Genuine Leather" may as well be the brand name of the shittiest fake leather sold on Earth, because I'd bet that a majority (>50%) of "Genuine Leather" products on the market are complete bullshit.

The cost and brand name of a product mean nothing. You can buy a $10,000+ "Genuine Leather" wallet, claimed to be "handmade" by a top-5 wallet manufacturer brand name... and chances are it's all lies. They sell too many wallets for them to be handmade, so the fact is they use sewing machines with the cheapest labour they can get away with. The company is physically incapable of tracing the chain of custody of their leather; they'll tell you to your face it's "genuine" (bonus words for "locally sourced/farmed"), but that's a game of Operator/Telephone 10 players deep to the point where nobody remembers the truth.

tldr; Most leather, including "genuine leather", is anything but. That includes the largest brand names; in fact even more so, because the demand for their products is too high to secure any kind of guarantee of quality regarding sourced materials. How many large-scale manufacturers of leather products are willing to legally sign on the dotted line that they can prove which cow and farm any given wallet came from? Exactly, and that's 21st century capitalism at its core.

I unfortunately prefer the economics of a self-strenghtening friction "buckle" on my belt. Until recently I used a simple fabric belt which had thicker (2mm) warp on the edges than in the middle. The yarn was about half the diameter I'd guess compared to typical backpack straps, but cotton or something less rough than what these typical straps are made of. It was about 2 inch wide. The "buckle" was just a pair of 3mm non-stainless steel wire formed into rectangles (2inch by 1.2 inch), which the belt was pulled through and about an inch of overlapping belt was sewn together almost aggressively. Usage was "wrap around hip", "pull free end from the back through both rectangles", "split the rectangles a bit from each other", "loop the free end around the outer rectangle, and thread it back between the incoming strap and the other rectangle", "hold buckle-side end of belt with one hand to the side (still contacting your body), while pulling the free end the other direction (tangentially to your skin at the point the 'buckle' touches)". This results in the looped-around rectangle being pulled against the other one, which squishes the belt between them _and_ creates a slight bump the incoming belt is going around before the rectangle side it wraps tightly. If the belt isn't too smooth, this is self-locking while under force (your body is elastic), and to unlock, you just twist the rectangles around your the long axis of your spine to decrease the bump from the looped-back part of the belt. You can do that by bracing the hand with the outside of the intermediate phalanges of middle and ring fingee, while reaching with thumb and index finger to pull the steel rectangle's corners with a slight pinching force (that is just trying to shorten the larger dimension of the rectangle). This means that loosening to drop pants that drop to the knees if the belt is gone is a 3 μstep action done blind with one hand (touch belt/buckle with supporting phalanges, pinch corners, twist and pull away from your body to create some slack. This takes half a second.

My new buckle is a case the loose end is threaded through, which has guide slots in the sides facing your nose and toes (respectively) for a pin that is self-locking by pinching the belt between it and the inside of the side of the case facing away from you. This requires two hands to reduce load on the buckle, followed by pinching the pin where it pokes it's rounded ends through the slots to pull it out of the self-locking end of the slot.

I preferred the old one, but how to find a good belt like that? Also, it tends to look tattered/unprofessional with the friction-damaged fabric belt and the non-shiny (not obviously rusty) steel wire rectangles.

If anyone knows a source for such at sane pricing, I'd appreciate sharing of knowledge.

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