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Leather, like fur, is made from animal's skin, but it has become not only an acceptable but also a common kind of apparel in society. Animal leather can be found on belts, shoes, handbags, sofas, phone covers, wallets, and vehicle seats, among other things. Leather becoming ubiquitous of our society is an understatement.

Leather comes from a variety of animals, including cows, pigs, sheep, and goats, as well as unusual creatures like ostriches, kangaroos, and alligators. The leather business is responsible for the murder of approximately a billion animals around the world, with India and China being the largest exporters.

The majority of leather in the United States comes from cows and calves, which are animals removed from the dairy sector after their milk output declines and calves bred for veal. Designer labels such as Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Christian Dior, and others sell products produced from the skin of unborn calves and lambs, which are the result of aborted pregnancies, and this is referred to as luxury. These brands have been highly accused for doing so. Exotic animal leather from alligators and crocodiles is also in demand; factories raise their flesh and skin. Every year, millions of kangaroos are butchered in Australia, and snakes are frequently skinned alive. Ostrich slaughter is popular in South Africa, with the business supplying skin to Hermes and other fashion brands. In most parts of India, healthy animals and cows are killed and slaughtered in secret because cows are revered in India. This leather is sold to high street brands and if you buy leather, this is what you are paying for and people are getting more aware about it. In China, estimated 2 million dogs and cats, to be labeled incorrectly as leathers from other animals. Top brands source leather from China.

So we can take out a conclusion from this that there is no such thing as humane leather as all leather is a product of torture of not only animals but humans as well as turning skin into leather requires the use of incredibly dangerous chemical causing cancer risks, skin diseases and heavily disabled people bring born along with slave labors with many workers being children. Such leather also cause environmental issue as toxic water is dumped into rivers and lakes, leading them to be highly toxic for people living nearby, fossil fuels are also heavily used.

People are becoming more and more aware of this phenomena and companies have and even more so in the future will face heavy backlashes from the general public if they continue sourcing and making products from such animal leather as it is unethical and will also cause huge harm to their brands and may even face boycott.

There are many vegan leather substitutes that are readily available which cause no harm to the animal, humans or the environment which can be used as great substitutes. We can

also talk about one such alternative where two Mexicans entrepeuners, Lopez Velarde and Marte Cazarez have gone famous from creating leather from cactus, such as initiative could save billions of animal killed from fashion. The fabric they have created using natural dyes are called Desserto which cause no harm to the environment and also saves animals from cruelty. With the fashion industry being the second- largest polluter in the world and leather being a major part of it, brands seriously have to start looking at such alternatives.

Even in Nepal, the leather fashion industry is growing with brands like Latido and Rhino Nepal Leather Craft being at the forefront of it as these brands have a great requirement to be proactive and adopt other forms of leathers and not animal leathers. As we know any foreign trend sooner or later finds its way into Nepal, it may be inevitable to when questions may start rising for these brands and it may lead to boycott of them, so it becomes important for such brands to adopt environmental friendly alternatives and also strongly communicate about it. So, people starting to be aware and not adopt animal leather products is a big trend which is currently availing and will headline the world fashion markets soon, so it becomes very important for companies to react in a proactive manner.

I would like to start the description of the trend with an example, let us go to a Pizza Restaurant in Mexico, where in the kitchen we can see an example of automation where a robot named ‘Bruno’ has started working where it performs the job of taking a pizza of the end of a line and putting in into an oven as shown in the picture below.

Although this is a small example, it gives us an idea of how automation is being used and will be used I a greater degree in the future. Such automated robots not only work efficiently but they never call in sick, need no pension or benefits and also does not complain being termed the ‘Perfect employee’. In the same restaurants robots also prepare the perfect pizza once they are ordered to do so from even your own phones.

They now function in a co bot environment, with a combination of humans and robots working together but the owners aim to make this process fully automated.

We know that in manufacturing industries technologies take up the manual labors, making jobs obsolete but the target now is white collar jobs as they can learn and analyze, the next target is the high paying jobs.

Systems have been put into place to create intelligent automation that can learn, make decisions and outthink the brightest human minds.

Another such example of a white collar automation in place is a software created by Blue J legal, which performs researches of a lawyer. How this works is, if there is a legal matter, you can answer questionnaires and put forward your problems, then the system analyzes huge amount of cases and creates a personalized solution for the exact problem. This shows that what this software does in moments would take the brightest minds days to do, and also having an accuracy of 94%. The jobs of future lawyer may be changing and they need to be technologically friendly in order to combine such technologies with human expertise in order to come out with a stronger solution.

The best case scenario for companies is to create such technologies with coding and even in the Nepalese market we have started seeing such examples with restaurants like Naulo and KKFC using robots in place of waiters to deliver foods to the table of the customers, which in itself has been able to create a differentiation for these restaurants.

So, in these two examples we saw how automation is changing the world job market for the mass but if we put in our brand glasses on, this is something which will make or break many brands in the future. So, it becomes very important for brands to adapt to the change and adopt to some futuristic automation tools in order to be ahead of time and compete in this world. It is not always necessary to take out all of human as we all know, nothing can really replace the human element but to ignore such a change could be nothing sort of foolish. So, yes automation could be the future and brands have to take it on aggressively in order to reap the maximum benefits out of it.

Brands have to think about how the can deliver some of their services in a digital format using things like augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. This trend is being further driver by the pandemic, as during the pandemic people realized do they really need to go to brick and mortar outlet to try on makeup when they can test the makeup through augmented reality. Customers also have started preferring trying out clothes in Virtual Reality whether it be inside stores or from homes to see how the clothes will actually look like. Such forms of virtual interfaces will continue in the foreign market in 2021 and may also make inroads in the Nepalese Market.

Once such example is system that allows you to try on clothing just by standing in front of a web cam. Here we are talking about ‘Swivel’, the first virtual try on system that helps people see how clothes and accessories from the store collection look in real time. This helps remove a lot of barriers as people can try a wide variety of clothes and accessories on without any hassle and in a short period of time. Such technologies could also be prevalent for boutique stores in the Nepalese market as people can try on different accessories and clothes both in the stores and at home, helping them try a wider variety and also save time, this could help boutique like Oodni create a real differentiation and be a leader in terms of technology in the market.

Here we can take example of an application of Sephora named ‘Sephora Virtual Artist’ using augmented reality that lets people try on makeup which lets people see how they look in different shades without having to put them on. This reduces a lot of perceived risk for people on whether they will like the makeup or not, also helping improve customer satisfaction overall. These are several other apps also that let you try on and purchase makeup, this can be done for nails as well. In our country premium make up and nail parlors can use this technology to ensure higher satisfaction of their customers.

After looking at some of the examples of virtual reality, we can see how brands globally have been leveraging such technology and also how stores in the given categories can leverage them in order to reduce perceived risk and improve customer satisfaction leading to higher sales and formation of positive brand attitude and equity.

So, these are some the trends that are currently prevalent mostly in the global market and will surely find its way to the Nepalese market. Companies globally and locally have to be prepared to identify such trends and take actions so that they can lead innovation through it and not be extinct. Even for us as future brand managers and marketers it is always important to keep an eye out for such business trends in order to maximize the benefits of it for our business.