Why silicone not leather?

Silicone coated webbing doesn’t gain much market share in field of webbing. Nylon, polyester and artificial leather are the most popular materials for webbing. Of course, each type of webbing owns its advantage and shortage. Then coated webbing gives the market more choice. Generally, PVC coated webbing gains the most market share of coated webbing, then TPU one, and finally the silicone coated webbing.

Why silicone webbing occupy the least market share? There are two main reasons. Firstly, silicone webbing owns the highest price among three types of coated webbing. The high cost prompts manufacturers to choose the cheaper PVC one. Secondly, silicone is not easy to process. That refers to feature of silicone material. Processing silicone not only generates higher error rate, but also leads to higher cost.

Although leather webbing is widely used in fashion fields such as bags and belts, silicone coated webbing gives customers one more choice. Actually, both leather webbing and silicone webbing are soft and skin-friendly. But they have different feature and advantages. We can compare these two types of webbing in several dimensions.

1. Price

Artificial leather is the cheapest, silicone coated webbing reaches the second class, and real leather webbing is the most expensive.

2. Anti-aging performance

In case of maintaining in right way, real leather webbing is actually anti-aging. You will find your real leather bag is still like the new one even it has been kept in the shelf for ten years. Silicone coated webbing can also keep its physical performance more than 5 years. But artificial leather webbing will get worn in 3 years.

3. Extreme climate resistance

No matter artificial leather or real leather webbing, it will get hard and crack when meet extreme climate. Since the feature of silicone, silicone coated webbing can still keep its physical performance in both extremely cold weather and high temperature weather. After all, silicone is a kind of low-temperature and high temperature resistant plastic material. Silicone won’t crack or melt even at temperature from -40 ℃ to 250 ℃.

4. Mould and bacteria resistance

Silicone coated webbing is mould and bacterial resistant when put in humid circumstance. It is also very easy to clean and wash by water and brush. But artificial leather and real leather webbing are easy to go mouldy. Of course, leather needs more complex and fussy maintain process.

5. Smell

Leather webbing always releases some smell while silicone coated webbing is stink-proof. Though the smell of leather webbing won’t do any harms to people’s health, the smell doesn’t make us comfortable.

In conclusion, silicone coated webbing can replace leather strap in some cases. And it even owns obvious strength compared with leather in some situation. For example, to make a piece of men’s belt, silicone coated webbing can be abrasion resistant and smooth when owns leather texture that similar to real leather. We believe that the soft silicone coated webbing will have more application circumstance in the future.