Market Report 28.02.2025

What happened this week

This week, at least in Europe, everything centred around the Lineapelle trade fair in Milan. We wouldn’t say that there are any great expectations of the trade fair, as it naturally only plays a limited role in the overall and global events in the leather industry. Nevertheless, it remains the epicentre for everything that revolves around fashion, creativity and the use of leather for the finer things in life in the broadest sense. For mass production, it can at best serve as inspiration, but for mass production in shoes, furniture or even a car, it means very little. That’s why it’s the same as always. It is always a pleasure to be shown leather in all its beauty and elegance. Everything that can be done with the animal skin to refine it into leather is shown. The unbiased visitor can only be impressed. Except in very small sectors, we could not recognise any really remarkable new fashion trends. Naturalness, colour, touch and feel still play the dominant role, at least in Milan. Performance also, but in this show to a lesser degree. Among the exhibitors, one had the feeling that everything more or less revolved around the few, but very successful and well connected leather producers. The household names that still serve the successful brands in the leather goods sector offered the biggest stands and in some cases you got the impression that it was more a question of the social event than actually showcasing the products. In the end, this is also part of the business. The positive signals from this sector were also recognisable. If in other sectors we would say because the trade fair impression was rather mixed. There were also very many stands, you could only very rarely really see any visitors and disappointment could be seen in many faces. To summarise briefly, we can say that the spectrum between satisfied and successful and disappointed was possibly wider than ever before. For the raw materials suppliers, and therefore of course for us too, the trade fair is actually mostly just a place to meet and an opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues and other people and to take away general impressions. It is clear to see that colleagues who are connected with slaughterhouses have been given clear directives that the end of today’s low prices must come. For many, it does not necessarily matter whether this is actually realistic or even objectively justifiable. So far, these ambitions have only left their mark in the very high-end segment, but have not yet had any particular impact on the market for standard materials. The price changes are probably still rather minor for the time being, but tensions between the leather industry and meat producers are likely to increase in the coming months. However, this also means that some leather producers in Europe will take another critical look at their future.