Sourcing Charter
We would rather be questioned than vague.
Most luxury houses cannot tell you where their leather came from. MBALI was built the other way round, because the origin is the product. Our leather is never bought in. Each hide comes through a licensed conservation programme on land we work with directly, and MBALI carries the cost of that day so that all of the meat can be given onward to children's homes and less-privileged communities near that land. The hide then travels to one of two bark tanneries we have used since 2017. We are present at every one of those steps. No animal is caged, farmed, or taken for its skin alone.
One hide, one register
Every hide enters the register with its region, its date and the name of the tannery that worked it. That number is struck into the seal on your piece and printed on its certificate.
Wild, never farmed
Nothing we use is bought at auction or drawn from an anonymous supply chain. Every hide comes through a licensed conservation programme on land we work with directly, following the management plan its own wildlife managers have set. No animal is caged, farmed, or taken for its skin alone.
Every meal is given onward
MBALI carries the cost of each day in the field and asks for nothing back but the hide. The meat is donated to children's homes and to communities near that land, through the landholder's own distribution. The leather is what would otherwise have been left behind.
The right tannery for each hide
We work with a select circle of specialist tanneries, choosing the tannery and treatment according to the species, weight, grain and intended use of each hide. Where appropriate, hides are vegetable-tanned using bark-derived tannins, including African acacia and mimosa/wattle extracts. We do not move a hide between tanneries to accelerate production, and the tannery responsible is recorded in the piece's Origin Record.
Under our own hand, end to end
From the land to the bench, no part of the process is contracted out to someone we cannot name. MBALI is present on the land, at the tannery and at the cutting table, and the same register follows the hide through all three.
Made where it grew
Cut, stitched and finished in our Cape Town atelier, so the value stays on the continent the hide came from.
Authentication
Authenticated by the seal
Every MBALI piece is individually numbered—and every number carries its provenance. The reverse of the seal bears the piece’s unique serial number, permanently linked to the Hide Origin ID of the material from which it was made. Both identifiers appear on the accompanying certificate and are recorded in the MBALI Origin Register in Cape Town, creating an unbroken record from the hide’s documented origin to the finished piece.
Hide to hand
Six stages
- 01
Land
We work with a small circle of conservancies and family game farms we know by name, and we visit each of them ourselves. A hide only joins the register with its full papers — region, permit reference, date and the conservation programme it came through — so its story is complete before a single cut is made.
- 02
Care
Every hide comes through the land's own conservation plan, which is drawn up by its wildlife managers and follows animals that have already lived a full life in the wild. MBALI carries the cost of that day and asks for nothing back but the hide. All of the meat is given onward — to children's homes and to less-privileged communities near that land — so an animal that has already given its years to the veld goes on to feed people for weeks afterwards.
- 03
Tan
A select circle of specialist tanneries, each known to us for years. The tannery and treatment are chosen for the species, weight, grain and intended use of the hide; where appropriate the hide is vegetable-tanned with bark-derived tannins, including African acacia and mimosa/wattle extracts. No chrome salts, no heavy-metal effluent, and the water is cleaned before it returns to the ground it came from. The tannery responsible is recorded against the piece.
- 04
Select
Our master cutter accepts only about two hides in three. Scars, brands and thin flanks are honoured rather than dyed over — set aside, and where the leather is still beautiful, given a second life in the Isiba small goods.
- 05
Make
Made in Cape Town under one lead artisan, who remains responsible from hide assessment to final inspection — cutting and shaping the panels, saddle-stitching the principal seams, building and burnishing the edges, setting the hardware, and signing the register when it is done.
- 06
Record
Your piece leaves with a certificate carrying the hide's origin number, the tannery, the maker's name and the date it came off the bench. The same number is struck into the back of the seal.