Mike Redwood
Columnist
International Leather Maker
In the first year of this century, after it had been realised that the millennium bug would not end the world, I found myself sitting in a converted container in Southern Netherlands. I had joined Ecco and was sharing the container with the head of their leather division Panos Mytaros as he and the Ecco founder Karl Toosbuy planned the next formidable stage of growth for the leather making side of Ecco. Toosbuy had always believed that for a footwear company to succeed it had to be vertically integrated. He had started making leather from crust in Portugal in 1985, and I remember not being allowed in by the manager John Walters when I first visited it.
This new step in the concept was to move Ecco leather closer to Europe’s big fashion centre to be closer to the fast-moving fashion trends as well as access high-quality European raw material. The site in Dongen was known to Mytaros, as after studying leather in Germany he first worked in the Ploem tannery just along the road, before joining Ecco in 1994 and moving to Indonesia. By buying the very large wet-blue Tanco complex in Dongen, built by the Coreman family in 1985 and with a large effluent treatment plant, and adding an top quality research and development centre next door, Ecco’s advanced superior quality leather production around the world would be assured.
Tannery fire
The idea was made to work very well by Mytaros, who is the best leather maker I have worked with, and in 2021 he moved up to Group CEO in a logical move. But at the end of 2024, he left the Group after having been with them over 30 years. In the following May, a catastrophic fire largely destroyed the wet-blue operation. In November of 2025, Dongen’s economic affairs alderman Ankie de Hoon told the local Council that Ecco would no longer be continuing its presence in Dongen and that all its facilities would move to its Asian plants. The 2025 Annual Report put it starkly:
A destructive fire at Ecco Leather’s tannery in the Netherlands prompted a comprehensive evaluation of the future of the site. Furthermore, this event became a catalyst for rethinking how we could build a stronger, more sustainable leather operation moving forward. In conclusion, Ecco Leather’s operations in Dongen, the Netherlands, will discontinue. Ecco Leather will continue to develop and deliver premium leathers to Ecco and selected customers from our tanneries in Asia.
Much of this year, I have been writing about leather communities but mostly looking back at what has been lost in history. After many centuries, that is now the case for Dongen and its wider region where increasingly everything to do with the historic leather eco-system is being moved into museums such as the one in Dongen itself and in Waalwijk. Many traders, consultants and agents remain deeply involved in leather, as does Stahl Chemicals. Yet, with Rompa in Rijen and the bigger Hulshof tannery now closed, actual tanning in the Netherlands appears lost in history. The monthly meeting of tannery technicians which used to have a good attendance and many great speakers has now ended and it is hard to foresee anything but leather gradually subsiding into history.
Leather designers
In recent years with its Hot Shops and other activities, Ecco Leather has built one of the most dynamic and powerful leather brands, with designers from every segment and geography clamouring for a place on its annual creative material week. With all these design and creative individuals coming to spend a week working with and learning about leather this alone is a huge loss for Dongen and the Netherlands. The Ecco site will soon be full of other things, but how can this craftsmanship, excitement and creativity be replaced and with it the hope and enthusiasm Ecco brought?
The South Brabant Area has lost but how about Ecco itself?
Similar questions will have to be answered by Ecco. Given the current economic picture, the recent financial results reported by Ecco and a future in which the only certainty is continued volatility, this consolidation is totally logical. But it does hint at a switch to a tougher corporate approach from a visionary family enterprise. Ecco have always had that tension of a family business in transition and perhaps the balance towards financial dominance was tilted when Dieter Kasprzak left the top circle between 2017 and 2020. Like Toosbuy, he understood the value of vertical integration in product terms and described Ecco very much as a “leather” business. It came across clearly to me that this was part of their determined differentiation from other large competitors.
I also think that many observers, even industry experts, do not grasp the determination of Ecco that every model in any chosen colour made in one Ecco factory should be able to sit in a window of a shop in New York or London and be indistinguishable from that same model and colour made elsewhere in the group. This almost impossible demand meant that leathers designed in Dongen and transferred to the other tanneries could not be redesigned in each location to fit slower drums, different spraying machines and the like. The design, equipping of all the tanneries and the processing in every detail, was based on making it possible for the leather to be made in an identical way in every location. This involved choices on plant and material that I had never seen made before and which were logical only when the Ecco objectives were fully understood. As Ecco continued with this, I was met with disbelief from many tanners who had tried and failed to successfully transfer European or U.S. designed leathers to Asia or elsewhere, and even more so when I showed a Business Professor from Bath, with whom I had done my MBA, around Dongen. He was loud and clear that “this model will not work.”
Yet it did work and carried on successfully for over two decades. So, in this regard, the joint loss of Mytaros and the Dongen facility that he developed specifically to achieve it creates many problems, not least the loss of the group tacit knowledge which permeates every part of this leather company more than any I have ever seen. On every visit and contact I have had since I left the business, the feeling has only grown in importance.
Ecco has good people
I imagine and hope that a core group of skilled employees will make the move to Asia, and the formulations and future for leather making will remain intact. Ecco is a clever company with good people. But with no European base, will they be able to continue handling so much from the raw hide and will they be able to look at each piece with the same clarity and value calculation as in the past, or will the future find a more volume-led Asian business?
An equal threat that must be converted into an opportunity lies around the future of the major European fashion houses. Is the loss of proximity to Paris, London, Amsterdam and Milan less relevant than a quarter of a century ago? Can something better be created in Asia? The tanning centres of China seem to be very production-oriented and devoid of the mentality of Tuscany and its major shoe and leathergoods centre. Tanners in Wenzhou are worried about a dearth of artisans as China ages and automation takes over. Even in the Ecco/Stahl-centric North Brabant, a team from LVMH in Paris could arrive on a high-speed train in the morning, do a day’s work in the tannery and be back in Paris for the evening. Ecco knew it could not evolve in isolation and that a European “studio” at the centre of fashion was essential to understand fast-moving trends, to host top tier designers, to produce prototypes in real time. Can they find ways to recreate that in its Asian plants in Indonesia, China and Thailand? The concept is clearly challenged by the move, but there is a fashion dynamic to be found in Shanghai, Seoul and Bangkok which might well be exploitable to serve a new generation.
Challenged also is the benefit of processing raw European hides and skins close to origin for maximum control and quality, and the ease of selling off those not suited to Ecco’s own production as wet-blue. A new system of logistics will be required.
Of course, we might be observing a more corporate approach to cut the losses, liquidate the expensive European production site and absorb everything into the rest of its more mobile, global network. In this scenario, Ecco can live on its history and backstory and remain vertically integrated. But in other aspects, it might subside into a standard footwear business. I hope not.
mike@internationalleathermaker.com
You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.
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