Recently, a customer left a negative review on a Floto bag, claiming it was made from “vegan leather” and therefore not genuine. I was surprised when I read this — could she have confused vegetable-tanned leather with vegan leather? Or was it something more deliberate, like a misleading review from a competitor? Either way, it made me curious. I started digging in and quickly realized that there’s a lot of confusion online about the terms vegetable-tanned leather and vegan leather. At first glance, they sound alike — both include the word “veg.” But in reality, they refer to completely different...

A few years ago, we began receiving some questions about products labeled “Genuine Leather.” Customers wanted to know: Is it real? Is it high quality? One even left a harsh review after discovering his wallet was stamped with those words. I was puzzled. Why was this suddenly an issue? Just weeks earlier, I had visited the Gucci boutique in Rome and noticed that their $5,000 handbags were also marked “Genuine Leather.” Clearly, the term couldn’t mean “fake” or “cheap.” After digging into the issue, I discovered where the confusion comes from: many articles and brands online claim that “genuine leather”...