“
Sustainability is rarely convenient – like anything meaningful, it has a price.
”
- SACKETT WOOD
SEVENHILLS FOODCO. LYNCHBURG, VA RYAN FORD, President
HERMANNOAK LEATHERCO. ST. LOUIS, MO SHEP HERMANN, President
MOORE & GILES LYNCHBURG, VA SACKETT WOOD, President
TELL US HOW THE RELATIONSHIP WITH MOORE & GILES GOT STARTED.
WHY IS HERMANN OAK UNIQUE? Hermann Oak is unique because of the character and value of our people and our product. We have stayed with traditional vegetable tanning methods, using tannage made with tree bark, that were the industry standard up until the late 1800s. We also look to hire people who have good character and good values—and we treat them as such. What attracted us to Moore & Giles was that it was immediately obvious that we share the same values, the same culture. Both have a reliance on the character of people—and we also share the same intense interest in developing new ideas, new leathers, new products. DESCRIBE THIS COLLABORATION. What we’re developing here is the result of a triumvirate, a team, made of three different companies coming together. Seven Hills receives the steers and ends up with a supply of meat and hides. Hermann Oak then converts that hide into a beautiful piece of leather, a canvas. Finally, Moore & Giles shapes the leather into something of incredible beauty that will stay with its buyer for generations.
WHAT MAKES LEATHER A SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL? Leather is the greatest sustainability story of all time. There are roughly 250-300 million hides available annually because of the global demand for beef. The environmental consequences of doing nothing with those hides would be catastrophic—just think of trying to landfill 300 million hides. The tanner’s role is to take a waste material and make something useful from it—that’s recycling. It’s an often forgotten part of the story. WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT THIS COLLECTION? I’m just proud we have the opportunity to do something like this. It’s unique, and when you look at the three companies involved, I really believe we’re the only ones that could make this happen. It’s a way to tell the story, in an honest way, about the importance of using the hide, a waste material, and making beautiful things out of it.
With both of our companies being in Lynchburg, Moore & Giles a leather company and Seven Hills an abattoir, I’d always said “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could send our hides over and you guys could make leather?” It’s almost unbelievable that here we are a couple years later and there’s a line launching.
HOW DOES THIS PROJECT ALIGN WITH THE VALUES OF SEVEN HILLS FOOD CO.?
At Seven Hills our mission and core values center around our partnerships with our farmers and delivering high quality products to our customers. Sustainability is at the root of the local food movement. The farms we work with raise the animals, grow all the corn, they grow the grass, they do it all. We see that when you have healthy animals that are raised right, in good conditions, it’s probably not a coincidence that the quality is reflected in the hides.
30 | 800 . 737. 0 1 6 8
MOOREANDG I LES .COM | 3 1
Made with FlippingBook Converter PDF to HTML5