— About Zando

Some things are never replaced.

They are kept.

We work in leather because leather has a memory. It begins life beautiful, and then, slowly and patiently, becomes beautiful in a way only you could have made it. Marked by your travels. Softened by your hands. Darkened where you’ve held it most. What leaves us is finished. What stays with you is still being made.

We don’t believe in disposable. We don’t believe craft is a marketing word. And we don’t believe the most meaningful things in life are the ones technology can replace.

— OUR STORY

Made by one pair of hands, in one small workshop.

Zando started in 2020, during lockdown, as something to do with my hands. I had no plan to sell anything. I made a wallet for myself first, made it badly, then made another. Most of what I knew came from trial and error and a lot of wasted leather, since I hadn’t trained under anyone. Somewhere in that process I realised I liked the work more than most things I’d tried before, and that I was actually getting decent at it.

I made a few pieces for friends and family after that, mostly because they kept asking. The kind of feedback you get from someone using something every day is different to a one-off compliment, and that’s what gave me the confidence to keep going. It pushed me to properly start Zando in 2023, out of a small home workshop in Glen Eden, Auckland, where I still make everything myself, one piece at a time, without a team or a factory behind me. I still work a full time job outside of this, so every piece gets made in whatever hours I have around that, not on a factory schedule, which is part of why I’ve never chased volume.

The leather I use is vegetable-tanned, sourced from tanneries that have been doing this a long time: Wickett & Craig in the US, and Badalassi Carlo, Conceria Walpier, and Maryam in Italy. I chose these over cheaper options because vegetable tanning is slower and costs more than the chrome tanning most leather goods use, but it’s the only method I’ve found that actually ages well instead of just wearing out. Getting hides from the other side of the world to New Zealand isn’t quick either, but it means every piece starts from leather I trust before I’ve even cut into it.

Every piece is hand-stitched, using a saddle stitch at roughly six and a half stitches to the inch. It’s slower than a machine and it’s meant to be, because a hand stitch holds even if one thread eventually gives way. I don’t use edge paint on my work either. I burnish the edges and the underside by hand instead, going over the same edge again and again until it holds a shine on its own with no coating added. It takes a lot longer than paint, but gives a cleaner finish that holds up properly over years of use, not just months.

I don’t think leather goods should need replacing every couple of years. Something made properly should last, and look better the longer you carry it. That’s really the whole idea behind Zando, and it’s still just me making sure of it, piece by piece.

— Material

Full-grain, vegetable-tanned leather.

Zando only uses full-grain, vegetable-tanned leather. Full-grain means the top layer of the hide is left as it is, without sanding it down or stamping on an artificial texture to hide natural marks. Vegetable tanning uses tree bark and plant extracts rather than the chemicals most leather goes through, which is why it takes weeks instead of days to produce.

The extra time is worth it. Vegetable-tanned leather changes with use. It darkens and develops a patina wherever it’s handled, carried in a bag, or exposed to sunlight, and no two pieces end up looking the same because no two people use them the same way. A wallet carried every day will look noticeably different after a year to one that’s used occasionally, and that difference is the point, not a flaw.

I don’t seal or coat the leather to stop any of this from happening. The reason I use it in the first place is so it can age properly. Over time it should start to look like it belongs to you, not like it just came out of a box.