Leather & product testing
Eurofins | BLC offers a complete range of leather, leather-product and footwear testing services conducted to international and customer standards.
Eurofins | BLC testing services include physical and chemical testing for furniture upholstery, automotive, floor tiles, footwear, leathergoods, bags, gloves, garments, belts, watches and any other leather accessory. Whole product testing such as fastening and zip function, seam strength, dry cleaning, handle attachment, flammability and much more are also available.
With rapid response testing (5 day standard, next day or 3 day on request, subject to the testing required) BLC offers a flexible and comprehensive service to the leather supply chain.
Leather Footwear
BLC offers a wide range of footwear testing including whole shoe, leather, component and fit assessments. BLC can test in line with CEN standards on footwear and has UKAS accreditation for a range of footwear testing.
BLC’s footwear testing facility provides the capability to measure the performance of footwear to ensure that it meets appropriate performance requirements for quality and safety.
BLC also provides a comprehensive footwear fit service on infants, children, and both ladies and mens footwear.
Leather Furniture
In today’s competitive business environment, it is unacceptable for high value leather upholstery to fail in use. BLC provides a complete range of leather upholstery tests to prevent failure.
Currently leather upholstery accounts for around 40-50% of all upholstered furniture sold. Many manufacturers and retailers could benefit from a better understanding of how to buy leather and sell leather furniture. The highest number of consumer complaints comes from the leather upholstery sector. Typical examples include finish cracking, colour loss/transfer, bagginess or a change in appearance. A simple range of performance tests can ensure that leather furniture does not fail either in store or in use. Every batch of leather used to make up leather furniture should be checked for light fastness, colour fastness, finish adhesion, flex endurance and strength.
BLC can
– test leather to determine performance
– identify problems with furniture and arbitrate in consumer claims
– tests for restricted chemicals such as DMF (Dimethyl fumarate)
Leather Garments
With leather garments so popular in the high street it is critical to ensure that the performance of these products meets customer expectations. Despite many leather garments being price point items, customers still have a perception of quality because they are made of leather.
To ensure that leather garments perform as expected BLC recommends a range of tests, designed to test the garments’ suitability for wear, including finish adhesion, tear strength, colour fastness, pH, rub fastness, etc. One of the most common consumer complaints is damage due to dry cleaning. It is no longer enough to label garments as “specialist dry clean only”. There are several different cleaning methods all of which can cause different reactions with the leather.
Leathergoods
BLC offers a wide range of leathergoods testing. This includes small leathergoods such as leather wallets and purses, through to leather suitcases, leather handbags and ornate leather jewellery boxes.
As with all leather products the expectation of performance is high. BLC has put together a range of leather performance standards to help leather manufacturers and retailers. Leathergoods tested against these standards are less likely to be returned by the customer.
