Leather Honey is the No. 1 best seller on Amazon for so many years, and it is still a family business today.
It is a great honour to have the opportunity to talk with the general manager, Shawn McGowen.
What is the reason that leather Honey has been No.1 best seller on Amazon for years?
The reason that Leather Honey has been the bestselling leather care product on Amazon for almost 10 years in a row is simple. Our customers love our products and then leave us wonderful reviews!
And then other shoppers see the reviews and know that they can trust our products to protect and restore their leather items.
There are tons of leather care products and brands in the market, do you think ingredient is the key differentiator?
Absolutely! Almost all leather care products are water-based solutions and made of lots of toxic chemicals.
Leather Honey ingredients are very different from most products. Our leather conditioner is an oil-based product that only contains non-toxic ingredients.
And our leather cleaner is also non-toxic and specially formulated to gently remove dirt without harming the leather.
In addition, our ingredients are odorless and colorless and will never expire.
Talk about this family business, how it weathers all ups and downs.
I’m the third generation owner of Leather Honey and my grandfather invented the leather conditioner in 1968.
What’s interesting is that, when my grandfather first developed the leather conditioner formula, he thought it would be used by shoe manufacturers but that never really ended up happening.
And then when my father got involved, he thought that most people would use the product on their equestrian items like saddles, harness and tack and he actually named the product Harness Honey.
And people do use it on that but it’s not the biggest part of the market for us.
When I got involved, I knew that a key factor in our success was that the product works great on all leather goods, including the most common items like leather care seats and leather furniture.
That’s why I changed the name to Leather Honey so that people knew that it worked on all leather items, not just harness and equestrian items.
And, as they say, the rest is history!
Team wise, how many staff are in the company? What are they taking care of?
We have a team of people focused on a variety of different items, such as customer service, marketing, production, logistics and accounting.
I found that many brands like to claim their product applies to all leathers, do you think it is true? What is Leather Honey most suitable application?
I can’t speak for our competitors, but I do know that our product applies to all leathers except for suede. And the reason that I know this is definitely true is because of all of the wonderful feedback and reviews that we receive! We now have over 56,000 reviews on our conditioner on Amazon and over 26,000 reviews of our cleaner on Amazon with an average of 4.5 stars.
If you read the reviews, you will hear directly from our customers that they use the product on all of their leather items, including car seats, furniture, shoes, boots, belts, jackets, baseball gloves and tack.
There is a very big difference on the recommended application frequency, that Leather Honey is twice per year, and most others one month, why is that?
The reason that Leather Honey doesn’t need to be applied as often as most competitors is because our leather conditioner is oil based and not water based like most other products.
As you know, water evaporates and that’s exactly what happens to all of the other products. However, Leather Honey is an oil-based product which allows it to penetrate more deeply into the leather and stay there longer because it doesn’t evaporate.
Some people complain that our product is more difficult to apply because it is oil based but honestly that’s one of the biggest advantages! While it may be more difficult to apply, you don’t have to apply nearly as often so you end up saving a lot of time with our products!
Except the US, which countries love Leather Honey very much?
The US is definitely our biggest market but our largest markets outside of the US are Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and Italy.
Do you have any plan for Leather Honey brand?
Our top priority is continuing to focus on making the best leather care products available on the marketplace! However, we are always looking for new opportunities to grow our brand. As I mentioned earlier, the only type of leather that our products can’t be used on today is suede. And that’s why in 2024 we will be launching a new line of products specifically for Suede!