We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Linny Kenney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Linny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success, and what it means, is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’m 42 years old and created a business about 15 years ago where I design and make various custom leather pieces for people all over the world. A few years ago, my husband was able to leave his job and join me at work and now our lovely farmhouse in New Hampshire is nearly paid off, thanks to our little business. I feel really good about those things and I feel incredibly grateful to all of my customers over the years, but the actual success I’ve had is somewhat relative. I mean, I’m not rich. I don’t have numerous homes or drive expensive cars. So how successful am I actually? I don’t think it lies in what we do so much as how we feel about what we’re doing. We live and we die and what we do during that time maybe isn’t so much about the money we’ve made or what level we got our business to as it is about how we felt while doing it. Are we happy? Because, as we all know, that’s success. And as the old saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness. But I have found, interestingly, that happiness can create money.

I’ve learned, with business, that you have to shift it a bit here and there to stay happy with it. Particularly with artists, who are pulling from themselves to create something for others, it has to come from a place of excitement and happiness. I have found over and over again that I get out of the business what I put into it. If I’m not feeling that into it, sales drop. When I get re-inspired, sales pick up again. It’s actually kind of incredible because I may not have even changed any products, but the energy behind it has changed and there is a real power in that.

You can probably tell that I’m currently in one of those, “I’ve got to shift something a little” phases. It’s okay, I’ve been here before, and I’ve learned that it’s sort of a necessary place to hit from time to time to keep things fresh. I could come on here and talk only about the positives, and there really are so many, but the truth is that there are times when you feel like, “Okay, this is cool, but do I feel like I’ve succeeded? Has the business capped?” If you wallow in this, it can be detrimental, but if you recognize it for what it is and you make some changes, it can make things even better than before. Often times it takes hitting moments of dissatisfaction to make positive changes. And the thing is, maybe it’s not even the business that needs a little shift – maybe it’s the food you’re eating or where you live or perhaps you need to exercise a little more – it’s all connected.

I guess, in summary, I think it’s important to remember that success in the business, especially when you’re working as an artist, is partly fueled by other aspects of life. Make time for the outdoors, get off the phone (I can’t stress this enough) and listen to yourself if you need to make a shift to get inspired again. It can be scary to change something that is making money, but if it’s not fulfilling you then it’s not going to thrive for the long haul.

Also – just a little side note because I think it’s important – stay current with tech stuff. Don’t be one of those, “Oh I’m so technologically un-savvy” people. That’s a bit of a cop out. Be technologically savvy – and if you’re not – take a day, or a week, and just learn it. Stay up to date and keep a polished online presence (but then get off your phone and get outside – I’m speaking to myself here, too!)

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

In 2008 I decided I wanted to ride a horse across the country. I was living in the suburbs of Hayward, CA with no horse and no place to keep a horse, but I had wonderful clarity in the idea and, one way or another, I was going to make it happen. I am now one of the world’s biggest believers in finding whatever gives you this clarity because you can achieve anything when you have a very specific and clear goal.

I got a horse, trained him daily in Hayward for nearly 2 years, and left Los Angeles, CA on horseback on March 1st, 2010. 3,700 miles and 8 months and 14 days later, we walked down the driveway of my childhood home in Bath, New Hampshire.

In the time I was training my horse, I lived with my mom and stepdad in Hayward. My stepdad had been a leatherworker in the 1970’s and he still had many of his old hand tools, dyes and even leather hides.
My first love has always been music and at that time I was in a really great band and thought I’d write some songs while I was on the road. So, I decided to dive into my stepdad’s old leather things and make a guitar strap for the ride. The strap had a painting of my grandfather holding me up as a baby. I believe I was using MySpace at the time and I posted a photo of the strap I had made. I also became friends with a musician who had come to San Francisco on tour who I made a strap for as well. His stage name is The Tallest Man On Earth.

Along with those straps, I made my horse’s saddle bags, some gladiator-looking leg protectors, his bridle, reins and a halter.
As I rode, I blogged whenever I could, showing our travels and also the leather pieces. When we arrived home, I started making more leather pieces for people right away, often times working on the floor of the house next to the wood stove.

Between my online photos and The Tallest Man On Earth helping to promote my straps, this unexpected, healthy little business started to form.

My leatherwork had undergone the ultimate test of being out in the elements – getting rained on, sunned on, snowed on, pulled and tugged on – and it held up beautifully. I still use my guitar strap to this day. I am proud of its durability, but what I’m most proud of now is the fact that our pieces are some of the most eco-friendly leather pieces on the market and that all of our hides come from cows raised humanely on open fields in France.

Leather is a byproduct. No cow is killed for its hide; it does not fuel the meat industry and would otherwise pile up as waste if it were not used. Even though this is true, and where I buy my hides from doesn’t have an impact on the meat industry directly, I still only buy hides sourced from free-range farms because I am very against factory farming. It’s my hope that the business can be another voice out there educating about the importance of buying meat from responsible and humane farms by only using hides from humane farms.

When I first started working with leather, I had no idea about the negative environmental impact chrome tanning has. I was using latigo leather, which is chrome tanned. My personal guitar strap (the one with my Grandfather on it) is chrome tanned.
Once I learned about the terrible sludge the tanning process leaves behind, I almost quit working with leather altogether, but after doing some research, I found that there are tanneries out there that care about the environment and tan in natural ways. I found the most beautiful kind of this vegetable-tanned leather in Italy and Portugal and now we work solely with that leather. At the tannery in Portugal where our suedes are created, waste from the tanning process is turned back into natural fertilizer. In Tuscany, the leather is tanned using chestnut tannins.

Our commitment to using ethical leather that is free of harmful chemicals and heavy metals is one of the main things that I feel sets us apart from the rest, but a few other factors including the artwork, incorporating the talents from other artisans, and creating a space in the home cook and chef world with our unique knife rolls and leather oven mitts also help to give us our own place in the market.

I was an oil painter long before I started messing around with leather. Leather is my canvas. There is a very recognizable Western style more commonly associated with leatherwork that I don’t really do. It’s a beautiful art form and I have a ton of respect for it, but it’s different from what I do. I am not a leatherworker who does art, but a painter who paints on leather instead of linen or canvas (although I do still do that, too).

When I first made a leather knife roll many years ago, there wasn’t an example online to use as a guide. We truly are the makers of the original leather knife roll. I designed the first roll with the help of the chef commissioning it. I didn’t even know what a knife roll was. Soon enough, my custom art rolls started to take off and three of my knife rolls were featured on Buzzfeed’s list of “11 gorgeous ways to carry around knives”. Our chef things have since been featured in Bon Appétit, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Yankee Magazine, and others.

Lastly, something that helps us stand out in a world of leather bags and leather things, and is also hugely inspirational to me, is incorporating the talents of the Andean people of Cusco, Peru into our bags. I fell in love with Peru the first time I visited and was in awe of their weavings. I’ve now been back and forth 4 times to purchase textiles and also design collaboratively via the internet with a women’s cooperative based near Machu Picchu.

Each textile that we use on our bags takes about two days to make and that’s just the weaving. The women shear the sheep and gather bugs and plant extracts to create their own dyes. The wool is first twisted into yarn and dyed in these natural, homemade dyes before they begin weaving.

Working with these Andean women ties into the first question about success. In my experience, travel is one of the greatest things you can do to break open your brain a little and get re-inspired. In Peru, I stepped into another culture where they combine different colors, draw different shapes and work more slowly and more carefully, all the while staying incredibly connected to their land. After my first visit to Peru, I came back brimming with ideas and inspiration.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I didn’t put together any initial capital and I think there are pros and cons to this. I’ve never carried any debt and I think that alleviates a lot of pressure, but it also forces you to start pretty slowly. When I first started the business, most of the money I made just went right back into it. As it grew, I could keep a little more and also give back a little more to the business and so on and so forth. That’s still what I do today.

I do think there would have been benefit in getting a little more capital initially because I could have gone bigger faster. For example, it has taken years, but we can now hire people to stitch up our oven mitts. In the beginning, we cut every single mitt by hand and stitched every single one ourselves. Now we can get them cut and stitched for us and we just hand dye and logo them. This gives us time to work on other pieces. Had I started out with a little more cash, I could have avoided the absolute torment of assembling every single one of those mitts and also could have been bringing in more income because I’d be working on other projects while the mitts were getting made. Also, when I first started making leather knife rolls, and no one else really was, it probably would have been wise to take out a loan so I could produce more while I was the only kid in town. Some years after I started making them, chefs started to become superstars and now the market is saturated with rolls. I should have gone bigger when we were the only ones.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Building an email list and using it is hugely important. We get a ton of repeat business and a lot of this comes from email blasts. I try to do one weekly, but sometimes I only send one out every other week. You have to kind of guage how much your customers want to hear from you. I’m honestly still figuring that out. Publicity is great for brand loyalty, too. Your customers will like seeing you in a reputable magazine or paper. It makes them love what they have even more and look for what else you have in the works.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.linnykenney.com
• Instagram: linnykenneyleather
• Facebook: Linny Kenney Leather