Ashland Leather Co. was created by two long-time Horween tannery workers in Chicago, Phil Kalas and Dan Cordova. Both have worked in tanneries for a majority of their professional careers, and consequently they developed a great passion and love for leather.
Using exclusively Horween leather, we at Ashland Leather Co. are dedicated to making a wallet that will live up to the time-honored Horween name. Our goal is to make you a wallet that will last forever, in terms of construction, quality, and style. We follow through on that promise by honoring a lifetime guarantee on all our products. If your wallet ever rips or if the stitching comes undone, we will fix it or replace it for free. It should last forever, and if it doesn't it's our job to fix it.
"Imagine being a wheat farmer who harvests grain all day but never bakes anything." That's how Phil Kalas describes working at Horween before he started Ashland Leather Co. His knowledge and passion for the tanning trade pushed him to create a business that allowed him to work with the leather he was producing, turning out a few beautiful and durable wallets for friends and savvy shoppers. Ashlands first batch was a hit and the rest is history.
"It gives me great pride to make something of quality that people can pass onto their kids," Phil says. "We could certainly churn out wallets faster and cheaper if we cut corners on materials and workmanship, but I would never do that. Everything that ships from our shop is a heritage American-made product that we guarantee for life."
Dan Cordova has been in love with leather for as long as he can remember. After two decades in the tanning business, his respect for the world's best leather materials is unparalleled — heck, his last name is Cordova, after all, the Spanish city from which Shell Cordovan originated ten centuries ago.
"When I make a wallet, I start with the best hides and simply try not to screw up something that starts so beautiful," Dan says.
"We only use Horween Leather, so our challenge is different: we have to respect and represent the materials we spend our days making. Our job at Ashland is to do justice to the leather."