What stands out here is that the shop keeps every seam sewn by hand while producing these bifold wallets in volume for wholesale and retail buyers. Handwork that survives real production volume is rare, and the process has run smoothly for a couple of years, which in my view says the system holds up under actual orders.
The sequence is well thought out. Vegetable-tanned leather comes out of cylindrical storage tubes and gets skived on the flesh side with a hand scraper. Curved sections are sliced with a round knife, then metal dies fetched from a workshop drawer punch the panels and card slot strips on a manual lever press. Glue goes along the margins of the debossed strips, everything is aligned, pressed, and hammered flat with a mallet, and the assembled pockets are stitched with twin needles and thick waxed thread through the prepunched holes. Edges are then leveled on a rotating cylinder sander, beveled by hand, and burnished on a grooved rotary spindle.
Two details stand out to me. The trim pieces are custom made from solid metals like brass and stainless, a nice touch. And the die cutting reportedly reduced production time by 60% while keeping quality on par with hand cutting, identical pieces every time. A fulfillment center handles storage and shipping, saving the company 3-4 hours per day.
One question stayed open: whether pricier wallets actually hold up worse than these was never settled either way. Given the maker's stated goal, affordable and long lasting like midrange bicycle parts, that durability comparison seems worth pinning down.
Project by Corter Leather. Watch it on their YouTube channel: