Forest company proves there is longevity in leather

By Bryan Gentry

Published: May 25, 2008

A local company with roots in the Great Depression is branding itself to be a source for quality leather around the world.

Moore & Giles, based in Forest, works with about 15 tanneries in Europe, Asia and other locations to develop long-lasting leather full of natural beauty.

That leather is then used in furniture for hotels and living rooms. Some of it still shows up in footwear, the company’s original niche, but it’s growing a presence in men’s accessories and even private airplanes.

“We want to be a full resource for leather,” said company president Sackett Wood. “If there’s a need for leather, we want to be the place you go to get it.”

Don Giles, chairman and the grandson of the company’s founder, said Moore & Giles has never been unwilling to change.

It started simply as a sales company, then it adapted as old opportunities dried up and new ones emerged.

“You’ve got to be very, very aggressive in the marketplace,” Giles said. “And you’ve got to be disciplined.”

Moore & Giles celebrated 75 years in February.

The company started in the height of the Great Depression. Don Moore, Giles’ grandfather, was laid off from the Craddock-Terry Shoe Company in the fall of 1932.

Wood said that Moore lost his job, but not his spirit or his will to succeed. In February 1933, he started the Donald G. Moore Purchasing Company in downtown Lynchburg.

His business specialized in selling materials such as leather and laces to shoe manufacturers — including his former employer, Craddock-Terry.

In 1935, he hired Vernon Giles, who became Moore’s son-in-law and a partner in the business.In 1966, Don Giles joined the staff at Moore & Giles one month after his grandfather retired. Not much had changed except that the business had grown.

“Basically it was a sales company,” Giles said. “We weren’t designing anything, and we weren’t making anything.”

That changed as the domestic shoe industry declined in the 1980s. So Moore & Giles shifted its focus to upholstery.

Then in the early ’90s the company took yet another approach: Why just take what leather you can get when you could design something better?

Around that time, Wood joined the Moore & Giles staff. So did several of his former E.C. Glass High School classmates who returned to the area after college.

They had the challenge of helping the company change.

“Everyone here has been given a new challenge,” Wood said. “I think the people who came in were hungry for that challenge.”

Tray Petty, now the vice president of residential upholstery, said the job attracted him because “it was an opportunity to travel and make a living.”

And travel he did. Petty, Wood and other Moore & Giles representatives traversed South America, Europe, Asia and Africa to find tanneries that would work with them to develop higher quality, natural leathers.

“It should be instantly recognizable as leather,” said Wood, standing in the company’s four-year-old warehouse in Forest.

He pointed to a slick, thick hide with deep brown tones. Some hides were still covered with fur. Other leathers were dyed bright colors.

“I think we’ve made leather more versatile,” Wood said, noting that Moore & Giles’ Kipling leather can take 45

colors.

As they worked with foreign tanners to develop leathers, Moore & Giles also lined up designers to use it.

The largest part of Moore & Giles’ business today is in furniture for homes and hotels, including the Craddock-Terry Hotel in downtown Lynchburg.

But the company also is building new business sectors.

It launched a line of Moore & Giles men’s fashion accessories, including travel bags and grooming kits two years ago.

Rick Coffee has sold the accessories at his Boonsboro Road men’s store since the line came out. He said customers have received them well. “The people that know good leather, they respect what they do.”

The accessories aren’t cheap — some of the premium leather bags command anywhere from $350 to $500 — but Coffee said buying one is an investment.

“They’ll last forever,” he said. “The leather will only get better with time.”

In the past year, the company started designing and providing leather products for private aircraft.

Wood said the private aircraft business is “a hole we can fill.”

“It is going to take time to build that business, but the first year is going well,” Wood said.

The company once started by a laid-off shoe company purchaser now employs 52 people in the Lynchburg area and has 40 sales representatives around the world.

Giles said growing the company to this level has been serious business, but it’s been a lot of fun, too.

“We’ve had a good ride for 75 years. The ride’s only going to get better.”