Why is educating consumers so important for the leather industry? Regardless of how you look at the entire purchasing process, consumers ultimately hold the purse-strings. By Is it leather? On LinkedIn.

Retailers have a huge impact on what is being produced, marketed, and sold – but at the end of the day, it’s the consumer who parts with their money to complete the purchasing process.

Sometimes retailers get a bit arrogant and begin to “push” products they want to sell instead of serving the market’s wants and providing the goods and services that satisfy the consumer pull. Good examples of that can be found in the automotive industry, where automakers often try to create their own “trends” like in the 90s where they pushed away from trucks and SUVs to smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles. Consumers pushed back hard and demanded their trucks and SUVs, and the smaller fuel-efficient vehicles fell back to the wayside.

Again, automakers forced the consumers’ hand with the electric vehicle push in the U.S. by aligning with government mandates rather than listening to their consumer wants, needs and concerns. Ultimately, the EV trend creation cost the automakers billions in R&D and left their consumer base confused, irritated, and more insistent than ever on their choice for gas-powered vehicles.

The fastest way to change a market is to empower the consumer. With leather, we need to keep reaching out to educate and protect consumers from the marketing falsehoods and greenwashing they are being bombarded with. Without “activating” the consumer with truths and the benefits of real leather there will never be any incentive for retailers to change their ways. Why would they change when they can sell inferior products, multiple times over, and make larger profits? Consumers hold the key to changing the market and we as an industry need to encourage them to use it!