The scars are less obvious on the Waxy Chocolate leather because the surface has been buffed a little. Chocolate is the leather to get if you want less visible scars.

Just remember that even the Waxy Chocolate leather still has the big follicles from the boar’s super coarse hair, and there's actually more color variation on that leather too.

So we absolutely can't guarantee perfect leather. But no matter what leather you get, it’ll be different from all the other leather you’ve owned.

We break this down in more detail in our article on how Gallun Leathers makes our leather, but we basically sell two kinds of wild boar leather: the Cognac and Black are called Jabari, and the Chocolate is called Waxy Boar.

The main difference is that the Jabari is full grain and Waxy has been lightly buffed.

This doesn't affect the durability. What it means is the Jabari ones retain the outer layer of the animal's skin, so Cognac and Black have a smoother surface that also displays the scars more prominently.

The surface of the Chocolate leather has been lightly buffed, so it has a more textured look, softer handfeel, a little more color variation, and the scars are a little less visible. The Chocolate one looks more worn in when you get it.

There's no difference in performance: all three leathers are very durable and don't need to be treated differently.

Two of the three colors are full grain: Cognac and Black, leathers that our tannery Gallun Leathers named "Jabari."

Because it's full grain, the outer layer of the hide is intact: you see more of the skin’s character and more of the scars the animal picked up.

The Chocolate Waxy isn’t technically full grain because the surface has been buffed just a little. It's definitely not suede, but it brings the handfeel of the leather just a little bit closer to the velvety feeling of suede.

The Chocolate leather is a little softer and it's more textured in appearance: it looks more like well worn leather when it's new.

But don't believe the myths about "full grain" leather being the only good kind. All three leathers are as tough as each other, and all three of them have a lot of character, just different kinds: the full grain ones exhibit more scars, Chocolate Waxy looks more worn in.

At the moment, they’re all trapped in Southern and Southwestern states of the US: mostly Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma.

We’ve looked into using wild boar from around the Minnesota-Canada border, but that hasn't panned out yet.

Gallun Leathers, an American tannery with operations in Wisconsin and Tennessee.

The operation is headed up by Edwin "Ed" Gallun, whose family has been tanning leather since the 1850s. He has since become a close friend.

There are many stages of making this leather — pickling, de-hairing, de-greasing, chrome tanning, veg tanning, adding pigment, etc. — and sometimes one hide’s journey will take place in both states.

Generally speaking, leather is tougher when it has a lot of oils and waxes in it. (Leather is skin and it lasts longer and cracks less when it's moisturized — like your face.)

Our wild boar leather is hit with a lot of waxes and oils both at the tannery where it's made and when it leaves the workshop, so you don’t need to worry about buying care products for your new Bad Leather Goods.

It is a good idea to wipe it down and apply some leather cream now and then, because it dries out with time and use. (Like your face.)

Conditioning also makes it softer (more broken in), increases the water resistance, and it makes the leather look cooler.

How often you should condition it depends on how hard it's been used, but once every year or two will probably be enough.

We asked the gentleman who makes the leather (Ed Gallun) what kind of conditioning product is best, but he said not to overthink it and that pretty much any popular conditioner will do.

We’re working on developing our own conditioner but in the meantime, we recommend Venetian Shoe Cream, Otter Wax Leather Oil, Cobbler’s Choice Leather Conditioner, Bickmore Bick 4, or Lexol Leather Conditioner. (That’s in rough order of price.)

We like these products because they won’t change the color too much (especially Bick 4).

That’s why we advise against more heavy-duty products that put a thick waterproof barrier on top, like Huberd’s Shoe Grease or Obenauf’s. Those sorts of products will darken the leather considerably and hide a lot of its character.

Remember, these products aren't boots: they just won't get so much abuse that they need the most heavy duty waterproof barrier possible.

Part of why we like this leather is that it doesn’t need babying, and you don’t need to stress about brushing it down with horsehair every time it gets dusty. 

But we thought we’d better include this question because a lot of people think that if leather is dirty, they should use the popular leather cleaning product called Saddle Soap — you should not do this.

Saddle Soap is a really powerful cleaner and astringent that can negatively affect the way the leather looks, feels, and ages. It requires skill and timing to use properly, and it's only necessary on extremely dirty boots and saddles.

If you want to clean your swine leather, wipe it down with a damp rag. If it’s still dirty, use a gentle leather cleaner like the one from Cobbler’s Choice.

If something’s wrong and the muck just is not leaving the leather, you can read this guide to using Saddle Soap — but don’t say we didn’t warn you. We won't take returns if you've misused Saddle Soap and it's sucked a bunch of color out of your Bad Leather Good!

Nah, the leather won’t be ruined if it gets caught in the rain. It's already got a lot of waxes and oils in it, and those are hydrophobic compounds as is.

If you were wearing this leather on a boot or if you wanted to go scuba diving with our backpack on, this might be a different conversation. But if you’re just asking if your leather can survive a rainstorm: yes, it’ll be fine.

If it gets wet and you find you can still see where the drops landed, the leather was probably a bit dry. Give it a clean, apply some leather conditioner, and give it a good brushing with a horsehair brush, and it should look better than ever.

The studs might take a bit of work to close when your product is new because this is tough leather that needs to soften with some use. (The same way new boots need to be broken in.)

If we made the notches easy to close when brand new, then they’d loosen up too much over time.

Once your product stops being new, the studs will close relatively easily.

You shouldn’t leave them on the bottom of a lake, but the leather is tough and oily enough, and it’s water-resistant enough for just about anything you can get up to in the surface world. 

It’s maybe worth noting that if you’re in a serious downpour, the zippers on the backpack and travel bag might let some water in. The messenger, meanwhile, is designed so that the flap closes over the corners so no rain can get inside.

It had eyes when we started making all our stuff, then we realized we prefer it without eyes. It's simpler and it makes you a bit less likely to think about a corpse. So some of our products and dust bags will have eyes on them for the first few months, but no more of them are being made with the eyes.

That sucks, I'm sorry. A lot of businesses like ours don't use zippers at all because they break so easily. We take full responsibility for a zipper breaking; e-mail us and we'll figure out if it's best for us to fix it or if we can reimburse you to get it fixed locally, which is faster and easier for both of us.

Sorry, man — the studs on the first batch of bags can sometimes unscrew themselves with use. The good news is you can just screw it back on. Use pliers if you want to screw with extra strength!

One reason is that these are diabolically intelligent wild animals that are very hard to catch. Sometimes there aren't a lot of hides coming in.

The other reason is that there's only one man who knows how to make wild boar leather that’s up to our standards, which means Gallun Leathers is something of a bottleneck. If they experience any issues that can delay their output — from raw material shortages to bad weather that messes with the moisture content of the hides — then we experience shortages as well.

It's nobody's fault, it's just one of the side effects of using such a unique material. Sign up to our mailing list to get notified of new drops.

The bags are made in a small workshop in Guatemala that’s run by an American friend of ours, Mike Pelzer. 

Hailing from upstate New York (which is where we ship from), Mike has worked in leather all his life; his German last name literally means ‘someone who works with skins and fur’.

Nick met him at a tannery back when Mike ran a boot business that was founded to provide more stability and economic development to the famous shoemaking hub of Pastores, Guatemala. Mike's workers were paid more than twice the local wage and received a lot of benefits, like health insurance and paid time off, that were practically unheard of in the town. You can read more about that business here.

When Mike told us that he was planning to open a workshop for leather goods, we realized we had a chance to make our dreams of a feral swine leather goods business come true, and that we could do it with a partner who has a strong history of improving the welfare and wages of his craftspeople. Thanks, Mike!

The messenger is actually a much more complex product than the travel bag, but we’re working on some tote bags that will serve as a simpler and lower-cost option for daily carry.

Yes, but we collaborated on the design of the messenger with a friend who runs his own successful bag brand in Indonesia.

We did this because Nick spent years testing different messenger bags and found that this was his favorite and there was very little he’d want to change about this one.

So while the interior is totally different and the exterior isn't identical to any of this Indonesian brand's products, we reached out to ask if we could license the design. .

But because working with porcine leather can sometimes be frowned upon in (the very Islamic) Indonesia, this friend asked that we not make a big deal about naming and crediting him for the design. But if you recognize the look, don’t worry: it was licensed with legal contracts and our friend’s consent!

No. We love faded jeans as much as the next guy, but we made sure the dye was colorfast and wouldn’t leach onto your belongings.

We’re planning to offer this option down the line, but not right now — Bad Leather Goods is a relatively new business and we’re still ironing out the kinks.

When you make the order and choose your mailing service, you'll be given an estimate.

Sometimes we need to wait for products to be sent from the workshop to where we store and ship everything.

There's usually one delivery per week, so sometimes there's a chance you'll need to wait some 10–15 business days for your order. We're working on making this process more efficient so you can get your products ASAP.

Not right now, it makes taxes really complicated and we haven't had time to sort out the processes. We'll probably ship internationally in the future.

You can return unused products for any reason in the first two weeks. As a super small business, it's very painful to cover shipping for returns, but we'll do it if you're returning it in those first two weeks.

The most common issue is a zipper not working. If that happens, it's typically cheaper (and much faster) for you to get it fixed locally, to send us your receipt, and have us reimburse you.

We’ll assess returns on a case-by-case basis, but generally speaking:

The Stuff We’ll Cover a Return For:  

• Misaligned leather: Like if the messenger’s flap isn’t covering the corners, closure snaps can’t meet each other, etc.
  
• Broken hardware: The zipper doesn’t work, a stud fell off, etc. For a lot of minor issues like this, we’ll probably ask if we can pay for you to get it fixed locally.
  
• Stitching comes undone: if the thread’s properly unraveling and a seam is at risk of busting, we can fix that for you. Again, it's probably faster and easier for you to get it fixed locally and for us to reimburse you. Just write to us at support@badleathergoods.com to talk out this kind of stuff.

The Stuff We Won’t Cover a Return For:

• Your leather is scarred and imperfect: We are super clear that this leather has scars and imperfections, you even have to click an acknowledgement of this when you make an order. Sorry, no returns for that.
  
• Loose threads: We don't mean unraveling threads; we're talking about a bit of loose excess thread. If the stitching is fine and the complaint is that we didn’t snip all of the excess thread off when we finished the job, you can just burn that off with a lighter, like we were meant to do.
  
• Wonky stitching: This might be controversial, but if the product’s functionality isn’t affected and the leather panels are still symmetrical and functional, but some of the stitching isn’t in a perfectly straight line or doesn’t have the same number of stitches per inch... that's just inconsequential, and antithetical to the notion of purchasing products that are hand made by people instead of robots.

But again: if the product is unused and you've had it for less than two weeks, you can return it for any reason, and we'll refund you.

If you aren’t sure if your return is covered or if you think your case deserves more attention, please e-mail us, and we’ll talk it out. We’re pretty normal, reasonable guys. We really want you to be happy with the products because we wouldn't sell them if we didn't — we also really don't want negative reviews or word-of-mouth out there.

Importantly, we're all too aware that our business is pretty new and there are likely to be unforeseen issues that we just didn't anticipate.

Simply shoot an email if you’re concerned about anything at all, and we’ll figure something out. 

Yes, we have a lifetime warranty for our products.

We mostly decided to do this because our bags have zippers and zippers break. If that happened to you, it's fastest and easiest for both of us if you find someone to fix it locally and we'll reimburse you for it. (Talk to us first so we can register the issue before it's fixed.)

If a seam breaks or the leather tears (very unlikely) we'll work together to fix that too.

We won't fix or replace your product if something happened through misuse, like you stained the leather or it just got scuffed on something.

We're a new business and still figuring out the best way to manage these policies, so your best bet if you're experiencing or anticipating a problem is to just e-mail us and we'll talk it out.