How did you start working with deerskin in the first place?

Conny Thiel-Egenter: I am a hunter myself, so I knew that half of the animal is usually thrown away and only the meat is used.

Kadri Vunder Fontana: Conny and I have been friends for a long time. We would go to the climbing gym together every week. During a break, Conny told me that the deer hides are simply incinerated after the hunt. I couldn’t believe it at first. Then during the weekly climbing sessions, we were always tossing around ideas of what to do with the skins.

It was a lengthy process from the first idea to the finished products…

Kadri Vunder Fontana: First of all, we did a feasibility study and visited more than 20 different tanneries all over Europe. Only at the very end did we find what we were looking for – with Swiss tanners, right nearby. The difficulty lies in the size of the deer hides: they are much smaller than those of cattle. But the leather industry is geared towards large hides. This has greatly limited the number of potential partners. In addition, tanning should be as ecological as possible. In the second step, we then investigated which products the leather could be used for, because deerskin is full of scratches and scars – sometimes even bullet holes. We needed products where you want to show the imperfections of the leather, where it’s casual and cool. Since Conny and I were looking for sustainable shoes ourselves, we asked around at shoe factories.

The Deerskin Edition of the LCW is your first cooperation with a furniture manufacturer. Were there any special challenges?

Conny Thiel-Egenter: The biggest challenge was that you usually need very large pieces of leather for furniture, think of a sofa! That’s why the compact LCW is particularly well suited – the backrest and seat are not so big. What I like very much is the combination of our oak-tanned leather with the walnut veneer. It’s really fascinating how the two materials are almost the same colour. I was a bit sceptical at first whether it would be a good fit – but it’s a fantastic combination!