Leather Care Manual

(Image from the network)

Genuine leather is a made-up marketing term used to deceive the general public. Marketers like using the term Genuine Leather because products that usually are described as 'genuine' are regarded as valuable or of high quality. In fact, as the picture shows, genuine leather is the bottom of the barrel of leather grades. When the manufacturer only said "Made with Genuine Leather", watch out, they use this trick with their product.

The highest quality grade of leather money can buy is full-grain leather, also called aniline leather. It looks natural, it feels good to touch, but these leathers have minimal surface protection and thus tend to show the effects of usage such as wear, scratches, UV exposure,etc., and it's difficult to maintain. But if these leathers have been treated with either wax or oil, there is a little more protection than with a straight aniline. This treated leather is called pull up leather, also known as distressed leather.

All of our portfolios are made completely out of pull up leather inside and out.

The telltale characteristic of pull up leather is that when stretched, bent or pulled up, the oils cause the coloring to migrate and become lighter in the distressed areas. And they scratch easily, but they repair just as easy. Since it's an oiled leather, by putting oil back into the leather, you'll actually fix any scratches you've made. So there's always on your hands, and your hands actually will polish the portfolio every day. Every time you use it, you'll like to be buffing it, and then you'll remove scratches. This is the awesome benefit of owning a portfolio made from full-grain leather.

Pull up leather doesn't need treatment as often as some of the other leathers do. But like our skin, leather requires cleaning and moisturizing. If you feel your leather is getting a bit dry, it's time to do some treatment on it.

There's just a couple of things that you need to have on hand: Natural oils or leather cream, and a couple of cotton rags. One thing that's helpful when you're applying the leather cream is to warm the leather up. The warmer it gets, the more open those pores are, and the better it takes the leather. A hairdryer will work quite well. After you've got that warmed up, you can have one rag, fold it up small enough that you can control it a little easier, then apply some cream, the idea is that you put it on, and then pull it off, and then you can buff it later in order to get it to shine back up.

This will darken your leather somewhat, but don't need to be too alarmed with that. It will be darker for sure when you apply it, but if you give it a couple of days or a week and let it sit in the Sun a little bit, that color should return to what you purchased your product as.

When you put the cream on, just put a coat of it. The longer you let it sit, the darker it will make the leather and the more it will penetrate the leather. If your leather is still fairly supple and doesn't need it that much, you can rub it off with another rag almost immediately after you put it on.

You don't have to worry about getting the cream on the stitching. Our thread is not going to be affected by a leather cream, so just rub it in there, make it look even, and then you can buff it out later if there's extra that's stuck in the stitching.

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