Our Story

In December 2025, I found myself in a familiar but frustrating position — a purse sale on the line and no way to source the material I needed to finish it. The leather was Apollo in emerald, a stunning Italian vegetable-tanned hide, and my usual supplier had stopped carrying it. Search after search turned up nothing. What saved that sale wasn't a website or a warehouse — it was a fellow maker just down the road who had enough on hand to cut a strap and get me across the finish line. That act of generosity stuck with me. The leather I loved was out there, but the supply chain to get it into makers' hands simply wasn't. That moment planted the seed for what would become The Leather Reserve.

The leather itself is worth talking about. MPG Industria has built a reputation that any serious maker quickly comes to appreciate, and it starts with color. The depth and richness coming out of their tannery is simply unmatched — these aren't flat, predictable hues but colors with life and dimension that elevate finished work. I had worked extensively with their Apollo, Aragona, and Graffiti lines, and what kept me coming back wasn't just the beauty of the material. It was the consistency. Double shoulders with a reliably high yield mean less waste and more confidence when cutting into an expensive hide. The leather has a firm temper that holds its shape beautifully and plays well with structured designs, and the edges — the true test of a quality veg-tan — burnish cleanly every time. When you find a tannery that delivers all of that together, you don't look elsewhere.

The Leather Reserve was born from a simple but powerful idea — makers deserve a reliable source for the materials they love most. The vision is straightforward but deeply intentional — keep favorite materials consistently in stock, so no one has to scramble the way I did. Beyond that, the goal is to thoughtfully introduce new lines, always with quality as the only real criteria, so the inventory grows in a way that makers can trust. Fair value matters too. Premium leather shouldn't come with a premium built on nothing but scarcity or convenience. But the product is only part of it. The Leather Reserve is built around the idea that a supplier should actually be reachable — someone who communicates clearly, ships promptly, and understands what it means to have a sale riding on a piece of material arriving on time. This is a business run by a maker, for makers, and that shapes everything about how it operates.