The story of TRIM

TRIM began in 2010, at a small bench in Hong Kong. I was learning leather the only way it can be learned: by getting it wrong, then getting it less wrong. The first piece was a book cover. It did not look pretty. The next took nine hours, a coin case I gave to my brother Benji. He still uses it today.

The honest reason is my father. He was a butcher in a food processing factory, fifteen hours a day with almost no days off, and the work broke his health. He carried our family on that schedule, and I wanted to build something that could carry it instead.

I loved leather. It is a slow material that rewards patience, and patience was what I had. So I stayed at the bench.

By 2011 the bench was turning out pen cases, briefcases, belts, wallets, bottle holders. Then I began designing a leather case for my iPhone 4, with one rule: nothing covering the front of the phone. Prototypes, trials, errors. The design was finished in 2012, and it traveled further than I expected. Etsy featured it. So did Business Insider and HK Magazine. Orders came from friends and strangers around the world, more than one pair of hands could finish.

My father noticed. He left the factory and joined me at the bench, and that remains one of the happiest moments of my life. My brother Benji joined soon after; today he makes most of what leaves the studio. My father retired in 2016. He is a farmer now, a gardener, a grandfather, finally spending his days on something he loves.

The work has not changed much, because it has not needed to. Full-grain oil-waxed cowhide, cut and stitched by hand, each piece made once the order is placed. The leather marks and softens with use. It ages with you, not on a clock. Yours will look different from every other piece that leaves this studio, because it is.

Thank you for reading our story. Whatever you carry from us, it was made for one person. You.

Carlie
TRIM, Hong Kong