3 April 2025
The three-day APLF 2025 event concluded successfully at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wanchai, Hong Kong, on 14 March.
As Asia’s largest leather fair, APLF serves as a vital gateway to the rapidly expanding markets of mainland China and Southeast Asia, which are experiencing growth rates three times higher than traditional western markets. This trend instills exporters with unprecedented confidence and optimism while presenting the leather, footwear, and fashion accessories industry with a vibrant market environment and extensive growth opportunities.
Being the premier event for the leather and fashion accessories sector, APLF provides an invaluable platform for exhibitors and visitors to communicate directly with each other in a professional and focused environment, opening up more business possibilities.
Marcia Lucas from Caleres, a footwear brand visitor, praised APLF for the layout and the way it organised the exhibitors’ booths, which bring more interaction between buyers and suppliers.
APLF attracted 624 exhibitors from 40 countries and regions, including 24 national pavilions from 18 countries and regions from the world’s major tanning nations. These pavilions represented Australia, Brazil, China (3), France (2), Germany, India (2), Italy (2), Japan, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan (2), Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Türkiye, USA and Uzbekistan.
APLF brings together the global leather supply chain and is known as the meeting place for the global leather industry. The range of exhibits at the fair includes hides and skins, semi-finished / crust leather, finished leather, exotic leathers, chemical materials and dyes, tanning and finishing machinery, and services.
In addition to APLF Leather, the fair also brought together Materials+ and Fashion Access.
Materials+ focuses on innovation and sustainability, with exhibits aimed at sustainable fashion materials, accessories and components. BMW designer Cici was most impressed by the eco-friendly materials produced by a company from China at the sector. She said, “This material has been successfully used in footwear and in mass production, and I think it has the potential to be used in automotives.”
Fashion Access is the key platform for sourcing leather goods in Asia, covering a wide array of bags, leather goods, apparel, cashmere and fashion accessories. Biswadeep Sarkar, the manager of Bharat Enterprises, a renowned brand in the Indian leather industry with a wide range of products including footwear, apparel, bags, and small leather goods, said that this time they came to Fashion Access to present new handbags with a lighthouse concept, created by the brand’s designer.
Shanghai Mallorca Co., Ltd specialises in shoes and insoles. According to Amy Wen, the brand’s sales representative, Mallorca’s insoles are designed for different types of arches and can support the arch well, so that even flat feet won’t feel tired after walking a lot.
The show attracted 11,000+ visitors from 68 countries and regions, representing diverse sectors including tanning, fashion, footwear, leather goods, and materials. They came to source the appropriate leather, materials and fabrics, or to select footwear materials and accessories, or seeking manufacturing supplies, machinery and other products.
Among them, more than 100 esteemed buyers were hosted for a visit to APLF. During this session, a total of 800 tailored business matching meetings were arranged, which provided high-end networking opportunities.
Nobuhiro Ogata, the Managing Director of the Japanese brand Abahouse, acknowledged that APLF attracts suppliers from around the globe. This diversity of exhibitors at APLF provides brands like Abahouse seeking leather suppliers with a wide array of options to choose from.
Education and information form part of APLF’s onsite events agenda and are an example of APLF serving the leather industry by being part of it.
The Leather Supply Chain Symposium, held the day before the APLF exhibition, successfully drew approximately 100 delegates who gathered to delve deeper into the current issues influencing the leather supply chain, spanning from the farm to the finished product.
The Global Footwear Executive Summit 2025 brings together 100 top executives, industry leaders and professionals from the global footwear industry, serving as an important platform for exchange, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. The summit, organized with UITIC and SATRA, focused on the challenges and opportunities facing the footwear industry, with sustainability and compliance being key topics of the forum.
This year, the LED Project, a collaborative initiative of APLF, has entered its third edition. In the LED program, designers will use leather as a common language and collaborate with top tanners to create distinctive fashion artworks. The third edition, sponsored by the Italian Vegetable Tanned Leather Consortium, invited six designers from China, Vietnam, Japan and Pakistan to collaborate and design the APLF collection with Tuscan vegetable-tanned leather, and to exhibit these pieces at the fair. The designers were also on hand to share their creative inspirations and brand stories.
The Best of APLF Awards recognised the outstanding exhibitors from APLF Leather, Materials+, and Fashion Access 2025. This recognition establishes a guide and standard for future exhibitors in the industry. |
This year, the winner of Design-A-Bag Online Competition 2025 also concluded, with Eliane Yahari from Argentina being named the overall winner for her innovative design, the Yvoty Bag. The two other finalists are Uthra S Ganesh from India with her Kolangal design and Jiang Si Mi from China with his DoDo Bag.
The APLF team is already planning the organisation of APLF 2026 as part of its ongoing mission to continue serving the global leather and fashion sectors.
Our next event in Hong Kong will take place from 12 – 14 March 2026, so keep up to date with the latest news by following us on www.aplf.com.
We bring leather, material and fashion businesses together: an opportunity to meet and greet face to face. We bring them from all parts of the world so that they can find fresh partners, discover new customers or suppliers and keep ahead of industry developments.
We organise a number of trade exhibitions which focus on fashion and lifestyle: sectors that are constantly in flux, so visitors and exhibitors alike need to be constantly aware both of the changes around them and those forecast for coming seasons.
