The truth about "Genuine Leather"

There are 4 different “grades” of leather. Each grade comes from a different layer of the hide. The most common type of leather, the one you’ll see in most retail stores, and some markets, is “100% Genuine Leather”. What they don’t tell you is that Genuine Leather is one of the cheapest and lowest quality leather you can buy. The industry term for Genuine Leather is Corrected Grain (Bottom Cut/Split) Leather. The term is intentionally vague, which could confuse some buyers to think it’s the best quality, when it’s actually the worst quality.

The 4 different "grades" of leather:

Full grain
Top Grain
Genuine Leather
Bonded Leather

To understand the difference, let’s look at a hide and see how each type fits into the overall picture:

As you can see the fibers near the bottom of the hide are more loose, which means it’s less dense. That means it’s easier to break apart and wear out. If you’ve ever owned a “Genuine Leather” product and it’s ripped on you, that’s why. The fibers are so spread apart and loose that it’s almost like tearing a piece of bread apart.

At the top is the highest quality, full grain. Full grain leather has more tightly bound fibers so it’s much harder to break. This is the type of leather used for making saddles because if it’s taken care of, it’s virtually impossible to break under normal circumstances, and it molds so whatever is holding it.

Genuine leather is literally what’s left AFTER the Full grain and Top grain parts of the hide are used.

When you buy a leather product, ask what “grade” of leather it is. If they don’t know, or tell you it’s full grain and you want to make sure, there’s a few ways you can tell, but keep in mind their are dozens of types of leather (pigskin, cow) and different types of dying (we’ll get to that in a second) but here are some tests:

Most genuine leather is sanded and buffed to remove imperfections, then “stamped” to make it look like leather. It’s shiny, and when you pick it up and hold it, it will just feels cheap. If the vendor is telling you it’s genuine leather, ask for the “weight” (usually measured in ounces). If they have no idea, it’s most likely genuine leather they’re truing to pass off as full or top grain.

A&A Leather only uses full grain leather from a tannery that's been around since 1905. The leather is harder to work with, but will last multiple lifetimes if well-loved.