If you haven’t noticed, we’ve dropped our prices for 2010 on many of our exotic skins and just today we’ve added 5 colors of freshly tanned 2010 Black Tip Shark skins, housed in our warehouses and ready for shipment!
Genuine Shark skin is popular for upholstery and wallets where a durable long-lasting leather is desired. Shark has a fine grainy texture with smooth ripples across the surface. It holds up well against friction, and because of its durability it’s popular with upholstery and wallets. (I personally carry a genuine shark wallet, it’s been carried every day for 6 years and it’s still yet to have a puncture or scratch.)
That’s not all – we’ve also added two new additions to our Stingray inventory!
Our Saddle Size stingray skins are our reserve of extra large stingray skins, painted in an assortment of patterns and colors. We have put these skins are set aside exclusively for seam-free upholstery of motorcycle seats, saddles, and other seating applications. These stingray leather hides are a fat 16″ x 32″ so the material can cover the surface and still have enough left to wrap around the bottom of the seat.
Need something more economical? We have also added Long Stingray skins (measured at 8″ x 18″) – perfect for jewerly and inlays where only a small portion of skin is required. These skins have all of the quality you expect in stingray skin from American Exotics, scaled to an economical size perfect for smaller production uses.
Subscribe to our exotic leather product feed for more online sales and new products coming soon: Elephant, Eel, and Alligator hides for sale direct through the American Exotics secure online store!
It’s been a long time since we posted any updates, and 2010 will be an exciting year for American Exotics. We’ve been busy working on new inventory as well as future Website enhancements to make purchasing safer, more secure, and more reliable.
Here are a couple of announcements:
256-Bit SSL Secure Encryption
You can now purchase with extra confidence through our online store – we have installed a 256-bit SSL secure encryption certificate so any data you submit to us is with the utmost confidence.
Another note in placing orders: You do not need a PayPal account or an account with us to make a purchase. Simply place your order and submit your billing information as a guest to our store. Paypal is our preferred gateway and payment management system because they offer good protection for both the consumer and businesses.
Coming Soon – Alligator, Shark, and More!
We have sourced some new species and exotic leather skins and will be posting them for online purchase very soon for the Spring 2010 season. This includes an inventory of tanned genuine Shark skin and American Alligator hides. Subscribe to our product feed or our news feed for future announcements!
The drying process of exotic skin is absolutely crucial to producing high quality, grade A skins. As with most aspects of tanneries, the drying areas of an exotic leather tannery require ample space.
That said, there are three processes to drying a tanned exotic skin to perfection – the crust, the color, and the finish.
The drying process can be laborious; it requires the stretching of the hides during the tanning process, forcing the hides to dry flat. Not stretching a hide during tanning leaves it wavy or cause it to roll, creating an inconsistent finish or a skin that will be difficult to use in production. Skins are dried at a low temperature with low humidity to produce the best quality; high temperature drying causes shrinking and a harder, more brittle leather.
A professional tanner takes great care to ensure that their drying process is well ventilated, at the proper temperature, and the skins are properly stretched during drying to prevent warping and rolling
Dryers can be used, but only at low temperatures. Typically, finishing is a relatively quick part of the exotic skin tanning process, but tanneries should always do this at low temperature, low humidity, and good exhaust.
Here are some things you should know about the delicate, intricate steps in processing alligator and ostrich skin into fine leathers in an exotic leather tannery:
1) Batch sizes, process times, and quality measurements are different from cow leather – The smaller batches, the longer process times, and the more measurements demonstrate just how valuable the production of a full alligator hide is. This adds to its luxury appeal since it takes a true professional tanner to produce a hide of exceptional quality.
2) Skins are graded by the centimeter – Since exotic skins are sold at such small measurements (Centimeters), most exotic alligator and ostrich skin tanners will work very carefully to eliminate wasted material through trimming. This means they must be experts at operating the machines to produce the hides.
3) Chemical Measurements must be very accurate – When dealing with valuable exotics, there is no desire to “experiment” or “test” with skins! A mistake can result in wasted material which loses the tannery money as well as a poor finished skin.
4) Constant Inspection – From beginning to end, skins are tagged per regulations (since exotics are often closely regulated). Exotic leather production cannot be rushed – sometimes materials take longer to tan than expected, but rushing through the process to produce a fine material usually results in an inferior product. It takes a true expert to create an exotic leather to production quality standards.
5) Liming/De-liming/Clipping – Powdered lime is first added to remove the epidermal layer through an intricate process. After this has been removed (after days of processing) skins are de-limed with Ammonium Chloride. After de-liming, skins are clipped to prevent them from “balling up” and tying to each other during the drum processes.
6) Bleaching - Pigmentation is bleached out of the skin. This often involves hazardous ingredients that should be handled with care and requires ventilation, and proper drainage and filtration to do it safely.
7) Tanning and Re-tanning – A tanner adds his own personal recipe of ingredients and skill to craft a finely tanned, luxury alligator hide. Often an anti-fungal product is added to prevent mold growth when the skins are stored.
Coloring and Finishing – After the long and intricate process of tanning and producing a finished hide, it is important that a tannery uses only the best, top quality coloring and finishing dyes, glazes, and tools for their finished product. With the right application, a beautiful finished hide is produced.
