The Legacy of Leather: A Conversation with Will Adler, Founder of Will Leather Goods

WA: My inspiration was of necessity. The Actors Guild Strike of ‘81 occurred, first baby was born, and no income on the horizon for an anticipated 6 months. I started a business selling belts on a boardwalk in Venice out of necessity. The theatrical way that I presented the product on the boardwalk with incorporating hot dogs, punk rock sunglasses and belts in a carnival-inspired booth brought a lot of attention to our little business at the beach. My theatrical background in theater and film inspired almost a Fellini-esque presentation. Fellini is the name of a famous Italian filmmaker, who was very circus-like, theatrical and festive. How the booth looked – flags, banners, music, clowns and tumblers all hanging around our booth to bring people around.

WA: The biggest challenge was having enough capital to buy enough inventory for the number of sales I was getting right from the beginning. Not only was I selling to individual customers that came by at the beach. One major department store, The Broadway department store in CA, gave me an order for 5,000 units. We had to make all these products in our garage so we needed more capital. We overcame it by telling that story to Mitsui Bank in the garment district in Los Angeles, and they were very enthusiastic about my story. My wife and I started the business from scratch, and they gave us a credit line to buy inventory. 

WA: In the theater and motion picture business, nothing is guaranteed. You have to be very proactive to get business. You have to go to auditions and be very spontaneous, not only to get parts but to stabilize your career and the premise that the show must go on, no matter how you feel, what the temperature is outside, or what circumstances are happening in your life was the premise that I still live by today: that there’s no obstacle too big or too wide to stop the progress of the company. Resourcefulness, finding ways to overcome issues, is a skill that I do very well.

WA: Aesthetic beauty, which is inherent in good quality leather and that the construction is finely crafted so that the stitches are neat, the cutting of the leather is accurate, and there’s no unpleasing defects to the eye. Quality, quality, quality. Checking, checking, checking. From the Japanese concept of Kaizen, always looking to improve the product every time you make it – constant improvement.

WA: I look at designing like a sculpture rather than a painter. What I mean from that is I take the chunk of clay, take things off it and mold the clay to find the essence of the product. My sense of design is putting elements of the product together. For example, handbag: put the leather, buckles, thread and lining on my workbench, then decide how they are going to be put together. I do that with the material rather than just a sketch. You can do sketches and find pictures in magazines all over the place but when you work with raw materials and put it together, my tendency is to find new ways to put things together by using my hands and my imagination which is why we’re innovative in some of our products. Newness, constantly looking for new ways to construct by putting material together in different ways.

WA: The initial concept of everything we do is called consider: designing with consideration. Consideration means what are we making, who is it for, how are they using it, what are the elements needed to create form function and are the features and benefits of the product clear to the consumer of how to use our product. If it’s a bag for carrying groceries or a bag to carry your computer, there’s different elements of weight and security. We consider what we’re making before we design it. It’s not just for aesthetics. Elements of design for consideration of compliance and sourcing for keeping the waste to a minimum, protecting the Earth. Because we’re a designer with Nike for over 20 years, there’s nobody in the shoe or garment industry that protects compliance as strictly as Nike. So Will Leather Goods follows the same principles of 100% compliant, 100% social consciousness in the factories we use, social behavior to protect the workers and wastewater improvements and waste elements are high standard with Nike. Will Leather Goods adopts all these principles.

WA: I see the market has evolved to get less quality and cheaper materials to satisfy the mass market. Copy the highest designers and make them in less expensive materials. Our philosophy at Will Leather Goods is exactly the opposite. The highest materials we can find to satisfy our core competency, which is giving the customer a 100% guarantee that the product is both aesthetically to date, has great form and function, and will not fall apart.

WA: What sets us apart is that we are constantly using old-school customer service to satisfy the customer, that the customer is always right, and the customer is our boss. We do our best, and if the customer loves it, we’re very happy. If the customer is not satisfied with our product in any way, we modify and change the design for the future and take care of their needs for the present.

We plan to do another show collaboration with Nike, probably with Air Force 1, not unsimilar to the Nike collaboration we did 8 years ago, but with a new type of leather.

WA: We are really good at brick-and-mortar, so we are planning to open a minimum of two stores per year now. I see how important e-commerce is, but e-commerce will become more and more merchandised that ‘less is more’ and we will be driving people to our stores and buying the best of the best on e-commerce.

WA: My leadership style is management by objective, so I spend a lot of time getting clear with the team, why we want something and what we want. That can take some time because people evaluate needs and timing differently. So we’ll spend time deciding what we want and how long it will take. Once that’s clarified, my management style is just checking in almost daily how it’s going, to deal with questions, communications, and most importantly creative ideas and solutions that have arisen in the project. Only by checking in daily, verbally not by email does everybody, especially myself get clear how to modify and make the project better.

WA: I exercise in some way through hiking daily, anywhere from one mile to three miles and watch my intake of sugar to a minimum because that seems to cloud my mind (that is very difficult for someone who loves ice cream).

WA: Since the beginning of Will Leather Goods, we established the Give Will Foundation which gives backpacks to underprivileged children in America, and we’ve given away close to 100,000 backpacks since its initiation. During Covid we’d give a certain amount of money from our website sales to provide meals for people who were having trouble making a living during that time. We are very involved in the community, both spontaneous of what’s needed and wanted and through the Give Will program.

WA: My advice would be to create something either as practical as possible that has some element that is pleasing to the eye or to the touch. For example, we have a new line of lighters, basically a Zippo lighter but we covered it with different kinds of leather. I can see that if somebody just wanted to take this one product, it probably could cover Zippo lighters or different kinds of BIC lighters with leather or material. It seems as though that concept of taking something that’s very practical that people use and finding some creative way to sell them. In our world it’s taking practical things like lighters, tissue covers, pencil or pen covers and using our aesthetic in the field of leather to cover it so that it’s a practical item but also pleasing and unique. Find something practical that you can also reinvent into the marketplace.