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 not bought in — every hide comes from a licensed conservation hunt on land we work with directly, the meat feeds the people who live there, and the hide travels to one of two bark tanneries we have used since 2017. MBALI is present at every one of those steps. No animal is caged, raised 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.
Culturally hunted, never farmed
Nothing we use is bought at auction or lifted from an anonymous supply chain. Every hide comes from a licensed conservation hunt on land we work with directly — older animals past breeding, or animals a game manager has already marked for removal. No animal is caged, raised or taken for its skin alone.
The meat feeds people
The hide is what is left over. The meat from every animal goes to the community and the staff on the land it came from, as it has for as long as people have lived there. We would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
Two tanneries, no others
We use two tanneries, both chosen for pit tanning with acacia and mimosa bark rather than chrome. Slower, kinder to the water table, and it ages to a depth chrome never reaches. We do not move a hide elsewhere to save time.
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 at the hunt, 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 by artisans paid a published living wage, so the value stays on the continent the hide came from.
Authentication
Authenticated by the seal
The seal is also the proof. Each one is struck on the reverse with the register number of the hide it travels with — the same number written on your certificate and held in our register in Cape Town. Send us that number, or a photograph of the reverse of your seal, and we will confirm the hide, the tannery, the maker and the date the piece left the bench. If the number is not in the register, it is not an MBALI.
Hide to hand
Six stages
- 01
Land
We work with a short list of conservancies and game farms we know by name. A hide is only accepted with its papers: region, permit reference, date and the management programme it came through. No papers, no hide.
- 02
Take
Older animals past breeding, or animals the game manager has already marked for removal. The meat goes to the community and the staff on that land. The hide is what remains, and it is the only part we take away.
- 03
Tan
Two tanneries and no others. Pit-tanned with acacia and mimosa bark over six to ten weeks — no chrome salts, no heavy-metal effluent, and the water is treated before it is returned.
- 04
Select
Our master cutter turns down roughly one hide in three. Scars, brands and thin flanks are set aside rather than dyed over, and what can still be used goes to the Isiba small goods.
- 05
Make
Cut and saddle-stitched by hand in Cape Town. One artisan owns the piece from first cut to final burnish, and signs 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.