A Glance Into The Clutch Strap Creation Process
Consuming is second nature for many of us. Everywhere we go, search, or scroll past has advertisements tailored to products we never even knew we needed. However, it is easy to get swept up in the seemingly swift buying process and miss out on getting a chance to understand what goes on behind the scenes. It is truly eye-opening when you take the time to consider the many steps, decisions, details, and helping hands that all contribute to making your favorite products come to life. Half of our story comes from our sustainable hide farm, manufacturers, and community in Colombia. Read along to follow the journey of how the Clutch magic happens - from hide to home.
The Hide Farm
The cowhides come from a nearby sustainable farm in Medellin, Colombia that helps to feed families across the country.
The Tannery
The Velez tannery utilizes all parts of the cow and houses a water treatment plant in the back of the facility that supplies clean water to the surrounding areas that are then used and reused in the production process. They also have machinery to burn coal and use the natural gasses to fuel the entire factory!
The first step to creating the genuine leather Clutch Straps happens at the tannery- where they bleach the hide (cow skin) and remove the limbs, fat, and hair.
The hides are then soaked and trimmed to be the shape we see in stores.
3. Next the hides are treated and tumbled in chemicals to dye the hides to a neutral color and then soaked with water to remove excess chemicals.
4. Once the leather dries, it is sent through a machine to set the desired thickness and are put back into the large tumble chambers where they add colored dye.
5. Once dyed, they put the hides on a machine to hang and air dry.
6. Then the leather is put through a machine that “softens” it by pounding the material at very fast speeds with extreme pressure. Depending on the desired look, a team then distresses the leather with their hands.
7. Then each hide is put through another large machine to add wax to give it body and shine.
8. Each hide is inspected for quality control. Many times at this point you can see if a cow has been branded and which cattle farm it came from!
9. Lacquer is applied and then waxed again….Or, our favorite, a large machine adheres a metallic foil finish to the leather.
10. After a final inspection, the finished hides are either packaged to send to retail stores, the manufacturing plant for assembly or stored in pallets or rolls.
11. The next step in the process of manufacturing a Clutch Strap is to send the leather to the manufacturing and assembly plant located in the heart of Medellin.
12. When the leather arrives at the facility, it is first cut into .75” thick long strips, or in our case — Straps. Or they will use a machine called a “troquel” to cut the desired shape for each component of the Clutch Strap.
13. Then the hardware and rivets are applied and a high powered laser applies the branding to our Clutch Strap — the “Clutch Creations” text and our octopus logo.
14. Then they are mailed in bulk to our fulfillment center to be sorted, packaged, and shipped to your home :)
THE END RESULT
Thank you for following along to see how the magic happens when creating every one-of-a-kind Clutch Strap. As you can see, it takes many helping hands and a lot of love to construct a Clutch Strap. Hopefully, now every time you use your Clutch Strap you will think about our friends in Columbia and our passion to create quality products for our customers.
Martin (left) is the COO of Velez, Kristi (Center) CEO of Clutch Creations and Paula (Production Manager for Clutch Creations)
Shop now at www.shopclutchcreations.com ❤
Save 20% on your next order with code “BLOG”