Yemen Clothing Industry

Yemen Apparel Industry Directory: Guide to Apparel Fashion and Textiles in Yemen. This page is the Yemen clothing industry directory, provided by Apparel Search for readers who want to learn about the apparel fashion and textile industry of Yemen. Its single company listing sits at the very start of the clothing supply chain: Lepro limited Yemen, a Sana'a company dealing in raw and processed hides and skins since 1985. Hides and skins are the raw material of leather, and leather goes into shoes, jackets, bags, belts and gloves, so a hides and skins exporter is part of the fashion industry even though it sells no finished garments. The sections below explain the stages named in the listing - wet blue, pickled, dry salted and wet salted - what goat, sheep and calf skins are used for, and how a buyer reads an export listing of this kind.

Yemen Clothing Industry

A hide or skin passes through several distinct stages before it becomes finished leather, and the four manufacturer items in the Lepro listing name those stages in order. Salting comes first: a raw hide spoils quickly, so it is preserved with salt - dry salted when the salt is applied and the hide dried, wet salted when it is kept in brine or a salt stack - which lets it be stored and shipped to a tannery. Pickling comes next in the tannery itself, when the hide is treated in an acid and salt bath that prepares it for tanning. Wet blue is the chrome-tanning stage, named for the blue-grey color the process leaves in the material; a wet blue hide is tanned and stable, ready for a buyer to finish to the color, softness and surface the end product needs. A company offering all four forms can sell to buyers at different points in the chain, from a trader who wants preserved raw skins to a tannery that wants chrome-tanned material it can finish directly.

The animals named in the listing matter because each skin has its own market. Goat skins are fine-grained and strong for their weight, and are widely used for shoe uppers, gloves and small leather goods. Sheepskins are softer and more pliable, used for garment leather, linings and gloves. Calfskins are the premium end of the three - smooth, fine and even - and go into higher-quality footwear and leather goods. Lepro states that it produces a big quantity of wet blue and pickled goat and sheepskins and calfskins, which places its trade in the middle stages of the chain: material that has been preserved and partly processed in Yemen, sold on to tanneries and leather manufacturers in its export markets for finishing.

Those export markets are named plainly in the listing: Europe, India, Pakistan, Morocco and Egypt. That geography is a working map of the leather trade - India, Pakistan and Morocco are long-established leather and leather-goods manufacturing centers, Egypt has its own tanning industry, and Europe both finishes leather and makes the shoes and goods it goes into. A hides and skins company in Sana'a exporting to all five is plugged into the established routes by which raw and semi-processed material moves from livestock-producing regions to the factories that finish it. The listing also gives a complete set of contact routes for a trade enquiry: a Zubairy Street address in Sana'a, two phone numbers, a fax number, an e-mail address, and a named contact, Naeem ahmed sheikh, the Manager Import.

A good enquiry to a hides and skins exporter is specific about stage, species and quantity. Name the form you want - wet blue, pickled, dry salted or wet salted - and the skin, goat, sheep or calf, because prices and availability differ for each combination. State the quantity and how selections or grades should be sorted, and ask how material is packed and shipped from Yemen to your country. Confirm current details directly with the company before placing an order, because company details such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses and staff can change since a listing was supplied. The References & Further Reading block below carries the two external links that accompany this directory: the USA Embassy - Yemen and TeleYemen.

Yemen Fashion Industry Companies

Listings are given with the descriptions, addresses and contact details supplied for each business.