What’s In Your Resource Library | A Blog Entry From The Corporate Offices of Keleen Leathers, Inc.“That Ideal Sample You Seek Isn’t In Your Resource Library, It’s In Ours!”
Best explained by a true story of two clients’ quick phone calls to Keleen Leathers, Inc. for that elusive item they had in their heads, but not in their hands, and not in anyone’s leather boxes. Shearling hides have become a mainstay of our offerings. We sample them in natural colors for obvious reasons. However, we enjoy associations with more than forty tanneries worldwide providing us with truly tens of thousands of stock leather items in our master library which is merely a quick phone call away.
I have an interesting example I can share with you. One day we received a call from Lincoln Motorcars, Concept Car Division, and the question we were asked was; “Might you have your shearling available in a navy blue color?” Maggie went back to our master library and sure enough there lies a gorgeous navy blue shearling sample she sends on to the customer. A week or so later we received a very nice order for about 30 navy blue shearlings we quickly shipped out.
The 2016 Lincoln Continental Concept Car
If you lookup 2016 Lincoln Continental Concept Car, up will pop up a gorgeous blue vehicle and the interior images will show this gorgeous navy blue shearling skins throughout the interior of this magnificent vehicle!!!
A few days later we receive a call from a New York architectural firm expressing interest in our KLAD leather wall tile offering, asking if we can fabricate our KLAD tiles using our shearling skins? We respond, “Absolutely”. The next question was, “Might you have a nice navy blue in your shearling collection?” We respond, as a matter of fact, yes”. Out goes this same sample to the architectural firm. About a week later we open the mail to see a nice order for 260 KLAD tiles; 20″X 16″ for a Karaoke room in a home in the South Hamptons, New York!!!
20″ X 16″ KLAD tiles
So the moral to my story is, please call us with your requests as I believe the above noted two projects, oddly for the same item, reveal how our vast inventory of samples can prove of value to you. Truly there are many stories of “odd”, “very odd” items we have been asked for where the caller was extremely surprised that in fact we had exactly what they were seeking!!!
A few other examples where we came through for customers seeking items not in most leather boxes…
Genuine Skins
- 17 giant genuine premium alligator skins to be made into placemats for an Oscar winning movie star in Beverly Hills, CA
Capri Collection
- 38 hides of our premium “Capri” leather to be skived down to a thickness of .8 mm as the hides were then used as leather curtains. We have access to the only whole hide skiving machine in the United States.
Shagreen
- We’ve done 931 genuine Shagreen skins in five custom colors for one residence in Orange County, CA.
More unique projects we’ve received…
- 23 Canadian Black Bear skins for a custom rug for a Ralph Lauren client
- 200 cow hides of extreme size for California King Headboards for a luxury resort property in Sedona, AZ. Here we used dairy cows offering hides of extremely large size so cuts could be secured without requiring seams.
- 36 Genuine cognac colored eel skins for a residential client.
I was asked about cladding an entire giant winding staircase in our leather floor tile hides for a client in Greenwich, CT. We had a fabricator picture frame stitch each stair step, edging and facing panels in this incredibly beautiful leather. After installed the client loved it so much they did two more staircases in two of their other homes.
We’ve also completed orders for many wild metallic brilliantly colored leather hides for national award winning custom street rods. So, we hope you check out our leather collections for your unique and custom orders too! Thank you for considering Keleen Leathers, and thank you for reading.