How do you know which leather is worth buying or who is a better tanner?" complained a new buyer making a first visit to the giant APLF Fair in Hong Kong. "The booth holders are certainly not makinf it easy for buyers and there appears to be nothing to distinguish one from another. When you visit a textile exhibition, there may be hundreds of exhibitors but at least they give you a clue as to what makes their offer different from the guys in the next booth." There were indeed row upon row of tanneries who showed off their wares. To the casual visitor (and even a professional visitor) not intricately wound up in the mysteries of the black art of tanning, these rows of almost identical booths showing indistinguishable products must have been totally confusing. How do you decide whether India is a better place to buy leather than Korea, or Brazil? Beyond that how does the buyer separate one tannery from another? If it was confusing among the stands of tanners, it was even more so among the exhibitors of finished garments and other products. Regrettably, the presentations seemed designed to reduce leather garments to the realms of commodity trading-designs were overbearingly similar and eventually became a turnoff for the buyer. The wow' factor, where presentation really caught the eye and the imagination, was only to be seen on rare occasions, and an attempt by an exhibitor to develop a brand or persona even less in evidence.
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