This category includes establishments primarily engaged in tanning, currying, and finishing raw or cured hides and skins into leather. Converters and dealers who buy hides, skins, or leather for processing under contracts with tanners and/or finishers are also included in this category.
Establishments that fall under this category are primarily engaged in manufacturing leather soles, inner soles, and other boot and shoe cut stock and findings. The industry also includes finished wood heels.
This classification includes establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing house slippers of leather or other materials.
In the late 1990s, the men's footwear market was being shaped by two powerful forces. First, the American footwear industry had continued to be affected by the increasing dominance of imported shoes.
The U.S. women's footwear industry is dominated by large companies that design and manufacture a wide variety of shoes each year.
The nonrubber footwear industry manufactures all types of footwear except rubber protective and rubbersoled fabric upper (the traditional "sneaker"). Nonrubber footwear may be constructed with leather, vinyl, plastic, or textile uppers or combinations of these materials for all ages and both genders.
Historical data shows that the industry has been shrinking in both output and the number of manufacturers over the latter part of the twentieth century and the earlier part of the twenty-first century due to competition from lower priced imports. The U.S.
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing luggage of leather or other materials. The luggage industry produces a wide variety of products, including suitcases, briefcases, attache cases, hand luggage, tote bags, trunks, and occupational cases.
The women's handbag and purse industry produces all women's handbags and purses of leather and other materials, except precious metals. Approximately 64 percent of the domestic handbags shipped in the United States in the late 1990s were made of leather.
The industry category of manufacturers of miscellaneous leather goods encompasses a broad array of unusual products with somewhat archaic uses. For example, a significant number of items classified relate to antiquated equestrian pursuits and the reliance on the horse as a primary form of transportation, as it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States.