Leather Honey started in the 1960s as somewhat of a science experiment, when two friends—a retired chemist and a businessman—sought to develop an effective sole treatment for leather shoes. They spent years perfecting a solvent-free, nontoxic and water-repellent formula.
To test their formula, the pair gave a local postal service worker a new pair of shoes with one sole treated and the other sole unchanged. The treated sole, they found, lasted twice as long.
In the 60 years since, the leather conditioner, now sold under the brand Leather Honey, has become a hit as a treatment for all things leather, from car seats, furniture, saddles and harnesses to belts, baseball gloves and bags. Unlike many other leather cleaners and conditioners, their products contain no common allergens, including animal products, nut oils and bee products, including beeswax.
At the company’s helm sits its CEO Shawn McGowen, whose grandfather invented the conditioner.
“I actually grew up disliking the product because anytime I wanted to get a new belt or a pair of shoes or baseball glove, my dad would just say, ‘put some leather conditioner on [the one you have] and it’ll be like new.’ And of course it was, so I grew up knowing it was a great product,” said McGowen, who spent 20 years in commercial banking before transitioning fully to the family business.
Leather Honey products are available in brick-and-mortar retail shops, as well as in select national auto retail stores across the country. Since launching its Amazon storefront 14 years ago, Leather Honey has soared to a best seller with almost 60,000 reviews.
“I can sit here all day and tell you how great our products are; you won’t believe me but you will believe 60,000 other consumers that have tried the product and left a review,” he said. “And once you get that kind of momentum and credibility on Amazon, it has the ability to propel you, creating that snowball effect to grow your business.”
Leveraging customer feedback from Amazon sales, McGowen and his team began expanding their product line a decade ago, first with a leather cleaner that launched in 2014 and most recently with a suede cleaner and care kit. Today Leather Honey offers ten products, all made in the USA and available in their Amazon storefront.
McGowen said Leather Honey’s Amazon reviews have also paved the way for the company’s success in brick-and-mortar shops, despite the company never having hired a salesperson or conducted targeted marketing efforts to get into retail stores.
“People have found us on Amazon, frankly,” he added. “Whether that’s a small mom-and-pop leather goods retailer or national auto retailers that we sell into, they reached out to us because they saw the success that we’re having on Amazon and the reviews that they saw on Amazon.”
Leather Honey has grown every year since its inception and with Amazon has established a strong international footprint, with Amazon Global Stores as its largest sales channel after its U.S.-based Amazon shop. Its products are available in nearly every Amazon global store, with plans to expand into all stores over the next year.
“Amazon makes it fairly easy to be able to take your U.S. product listings and build those same listings in international marketplaces,” McGowen added. “It’s allowed us to experience truly exponential growth.”
As McGowen continues to grow Leather Honey into a global household name, Amazon, he says, has been a valuable partner.
“If you have a long-term approach to growing your business and growing your brand, no matter which channel you decide to sell into there are going to be costs associated with that,” he said. “I feel like we have fair fees with Amazon and with our other selling partners, and if you were to ask me to have to insource all of the fulfillment and all of the marketing that we currently use with Amazon, we would never be able to afford it.”
“It’s really, to me, a great investment in providing a first-class experience for our customers to be able to purchase our products and get them delivered quickly and safely to their door so that they can use them, love them and buy them again,” he added.
“When you think about what our addressable market is out there, the biggest customer base really is automotive and furniture. And so to the extent that Amazon has allowed us to expose our product to the consumer that uses those, that’s what’s really changed our business dramatically.”
At the end of the day, for McGowen and his team at Leather Honey, “it’s very possible to grow a profitable business on Amazon.”