Amber Skin Traders

Up on the second floor of T-179 on Chamelion Road, it is a whole different world from the street below. You can smell the leather as soon as you start walking up the narrow stairs. It is a heavy, earthy scent that stays on your clothes even after you leave. We have been in Model Basti for a long time. This whole area is known for this kind of leather work. We spend our days looking at skins and sorting them out into different piles. Some are better for shoes, while others are used for bags or heavy jackets. You have to have a good eye for it to do it right. We check for marks or uneven thickness on every piece. It is dusty work and your hands get rough after a few weeks. The room is usually filled with stacks of hides that reach quite high. It is not a fancy place to look at. There are no carpets or nice chairs for sitting. Just heavy workbenches and piles of leather. We talk to a lot of different people who come by looking for specific materials for their own shops. Sometimes they want something very particular and we have to dig through the stacks to find it. The light is not always great in the afternoons, so we have some big lamps. It is a bit cramped sometimes when a new shipment comes in.