BRAVE Legacy

Extraordinary leather artistry, since 1992.

BRAVE Leather was born in the summer of 1992, when a fresh young grad fell in love...with local mennonite leather and hardware. Just for the joy of it, he made himself a belt from these beautiful materials. Then he made more, selling them on the streets of Queen West in Toronto. He couldn’t keep up with demand.

Fast forward 32 years, BRAVE Leather is an iconic Canadian fashion brand found in more than 1,000 specialty stores across 14 countries, with a legacy of global style influence in magazines, fashion runways, concert stages and movies across the decades.

BRAVE Scrapbook

We've come a long way in 32 years and it's been quite the adventure.

ABOVE: It started in 1992 with a few simple tools and a sidewalk rack on Toronto's Queen St West. Our first machine was this hand riveter - bought at auction for $50. We still use it today and it has done more than 5 million rivets!

ABOVE: Our first hang tag from 1993 – we still keep that original promise! Our first logo, made with MS Word! And our first big order – 800 belts for the 1994 Canadian Olympic team. We had one month, and finished on time!

ABOVE: In '95 Scott bought a minivan - very uncool for a 24 year old - and drove town to town with his samples and his faithful Boxer Gypsy.

ABOVE: In the late 90s Scott started doing trade shows, and the booths got bigger and fancier every year. Once he even made belts live on the trade show floor in Vegas!

ABOVE: In 2008 Scott went to Italy to learn tooling and techniques from world masters. Today the workshop is 12,000 sq ft with three state-of-the-art Italian laser cutters -- unique in North America. And Scott's third Boxer, Bella, is 9 years old but still comes to work everyday.

BELOW: A wide shot of our modern workshop.