We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christopher Grinnell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christopher below.
Christopher, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
My story with Rough Diamond Leather began in December of 2021. My grandfather had been recently diagnosed with cancer, and I was in search of something to remember his artistic legacy. he was hugely influential in my life, an avid photographer, painter, woodworker, and conservationist. He taught me much about what it means to work with my hands, and what it means to create. Today, his teachings about quality, craftsmanship, taking my time, and taking pride in what I do continue to resonate in me and my products.
So why leather? Well, I remember my grandfather had a holster he used to carry with him whenever we went hiking near Jackson, WY. Beat to Hell and well aged, it was still beautiful to me. It seemed to match his personality in a rugged, patinaed way, but still elegant in its own right. I was looking into how to get one like it, and decided to try my hand at making one rather than buying it. It was a lot more work than I had anticipated, but it was worth it. After showing it to my friends and roommates at the time, they mentioned that I should start selling some of the stuff I had made, and about a year later here we are.
Today Rough Diamond Leather stands as a legacy to what my grandfather taught me. Each piece is made by hand, and designed to age and patina. My goal is to build and deliver heirloom quality pieces at a fraction of what the big brands charge. I want my products to tell a story.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Oh Lord, I’m terrible at talking about myself…
Well, for starters I am a full time restaurant manager and a full time leather worker. One of my favorite things about leather work is that, for me at least, the work is almost meditative. Restaurants are chaotic places to work, let alone run. Constant ticket time pressures, quality control, guest relations, cleaning, and staffing. To be able to sit in my workshop and listen to some music or half-heartedly pay attention to Netflix while I stitch or tool a piece of good leather is my favorite way to unwind.
As for what I offer to my clients, I offer what many other bigger brands can’t: personality and craftsmanship. I strive to make products that tell a story and that stand out. Anyone can go and buy a bag made by Gucci or Coach or Prada, but in a market so saturated with these mass-production brands they all tend to blend in together. I want my customers to have something that resonates with them, that will age with them, and something that will stand out in a sea of copycats, knock offs, and cookie cutter products. Sure, there are cheaper wallets and bags and such out there on Amazon or Ebay, and those products do have their place in the market, but I have yet to see a $20 ‘leather’ wallet from Amazon last more than a year or so. I gave a prototype wallet to my executive chef at the restaurant I work at, and a year later it shows almost no wear and he beats the Hell out of it.
What I am most proud of is my tooling work. There are remarkably few GOOD leather toolers left in the world. Most products today have been designed for mass production, and most “tooled” products are actually roller stamped or hot-press stamped. These methods leave a shallow impression which has a tendency to wear out over years of use. I tool every item the old way; by hand going inch by inch using a plethora of different tools, bevellers, stamps, and dies. The result is a MUCH clearer and deeper engraving that will last as long as the leather will. If properly taken care of, these tooled pieces will last generations rather than just a few years. Admittedly, this is the more time consuming method of production (several hours compared to a few seconds for a stamped piece), but the results I believe speak for themselves. I mean, there are tooled pieces from the 1800’s that are still around and clear-as-day, and I am using the same methods in my modern day products. I guess you could call me old fashioned…
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
Haha, yes. Everything produced by Rough Diamond Leather is made by me, and no, when I first started I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing. The very first thing I ever made was a very simple card wallet. I had wandered into a local leather supply shop in search of ideas and to get some information, and happened across some beautiful stingray skins on one of the shelves. I picked one up, and a few basic tools, some thread, etc and went home. As I soon learned, un-polished stingray is almost impossible to cut with normal cutting tools. I ended up completely destroying a paid of scissors after my draw knife wouldn’t cut through the material, much to my roommate’s displeasure. As it turns out, all those beautiful little bumps on stingray skin are calcium deposits, basically bones embedded in the skin, and impossible to cut through with anything but the sharpest shears, and I bent/broke 3 needles trying to stitch the thing together. I still have that failed prototype mounted proudly on my shelf as a reminder of where I started, and what I learned.
Today, those stingray bi-folds are my most popular and most requested items and I spent a lot of time, effort, and money in my R&D to get here. I guess that would be my advice: don’t be afraid to try something. If it doesn’t work, keep at it and figure it out. I mean, Edison went through 100 attempts to make a lightbulb before he got one that worked right. All of my products go through this same trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn’t. My first bags were almost unrecognizable to the ones I am making today. My first foray into tooling looked like a toddler had attacked it with a screwdriver, but you keep working at it and eventually your discard pile gets smaller and smaller. Then you’re ready for market.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
This one is fairly recent: I had a new product line I wanted to showcase in my marketing and add to my website. I had rented a very expensive camera lens to get the best quality photos I could with the most detail. I had props and everything was ready to go: all I needed was a venue to shoot at. Herein lied the difficulty: the products were a new line of stock cuffs for rifles and shotguns, all hand tooled, and all were attached to rifles my grandfather had left me after he passed that I had rendered inoperable for the photoshoot. I felt they added to the old-world feel to the leather designs/carvings. I wanted an old building in the background, like a barn or old log cabin to help set the stage, but where I live in Texas, no one wanted to let me photograph at their locations given the firearms related nature of the products. I reached out to numerous historical sites and heritage societies asking for an hour, early in the morning before any visitors would arrive, to set up, take my pictures, and be gone before the public would arrive. I received an ocean of “not interested” and “we don’t feel comfortable with the image this could present.” Even a major ranch in my part of town that held an old-school wild west shoot out said no. I was stuck, and only had 2 days before I had to return the lens I had rented for the shoot. Finally, I received a call from the Houston Historical Heritage Society. Their property manager had gotten my email and had some questions. I explained what I was wanting to do, and sent her some pictures I had of the products taken from my phone. She told me I could use their site in the middle of Downtown Houston at 8AM the next day to take the pictures I needed. I finally had my “Yes.”
The next morning I was there at the crack of dawn with everything I needed to get the shoot done in under an hour. I met with the manager, set up my equipment and props, and started taking pictures. It was a cloudy morning right before a storm, and people kept stopping by while on their morning walks to ask what I was doing and asking questions about my products. I went through all of the business cards I had on me and in my truck, got the pictures I wanted, and got everything packed up and gone in under an hour. In fact, I was loading the last trunk in my truck when a bus full of ladies from a local retirement home arrived to tour the site. The pictures from that morning are the ones you see live on my website, and those stock cuffs are the second more popular item visited on my website, and second most popular in sales. I guess the risk was worth the reward.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.roughdiamondleather.com
- Instagram: @roughdiamondleather
- Facebook: Rough Diamond Leather
Image Credits
All rights owned by Rough Diamond Leather / Christopher Grinnell