A Visit to the Leather Market in Sindang-dong

This time, I got to conduct a leathercraft class at school for students who are about to graduate.

Since I was doing it anyway, I thought I should teach them properly using good-quality leather, so I set out to buy some.

1. The way to the Sindang-dong Leather Market

The Sindang-dong Leather Market is located right next to the Dongmyo flea market.

If you get off at Dongmyo Station on Line 1 and walk for about 5 minutes, you’ll arrive at the leather market.

On the way to the leather market, just seeing this many people is part of the fun.

It really feels like there are so many different kinds of people in the world.

Walk in just a little further and you’ll come to the entrance of the leather market.

The workshop department store you see on your left as you walk in is practically the starting point of the leather market.

2. Leather Master

After COVID, as leathercraft rapidly rose as a hobby, other shops besides Dayang Trading grew along with it, and Leather Master is one of them.

They seem to focus mainly on imports and sell decent tools at reasonable prices.

I heard they had opened an offline store, so I decided to visit.

It’s small, but the shelves were really packed full of items.

The prices were exactly the same as online.

I have a feeling that one day it might grow as big as Dayang Trading.

2. Firenze Leather

This is a place I’ve often visited for a long time whenever I wanted to buy vegetable-tanned leather.

If you buy belly leather, you can get leather with a nice firm feel at a good price.

Especially for B-grade, you can even get Pueblo at a bargain!

There were a lot of changes in the products inside, so I took some photos.

The bags and items they always have whenever I come are really beautiful.

Here I bought Ponte belly red and black.

The two pieces together cost roughly 180,000 won.

I think I’ll be able to have a fun class with the kids using these.

3. Narae Skiving

This is one of the places that do large-area leather skiving.

There used to be Shinyoung Skiving as well, but it seems the location has changed now.

And at some point, the skiving fee went up from 3,000 won to 5,000 won.

A 70% increase in skiving costs in five years...

Fortunately, from the second piece onward it’s 4,000 won.

4. Dayang Trading

I still had a few more leather tools I needed to get, so I decided to visit Dayang Trading.

You just go down to the first basement floor of the building.

There didn’t used to be an escalator, but now there is, haha.

At Dayang Trading, I additionally bought a 3mm diamond pricking iron and a pony.

5. Thoughts

Coming to Sindang-dong for the first time in a while, the atmosphere feels a bit different.

In the past, the market felt full of energy, but now it seems like that energy has faded a little.

The spot in the back alley where a shop used to sell vegetable-tanned leather was completely empty, and some other stores didn’t look all that lively either.

I can’t help but think it might be because the leathercraft boom that surged after the COVID pandemic has died down a bit.

Even though everything felt new since I was visiting after so long, it wasn’t all that difficult to find what I needed.

If you have a vague sense of fear about Sindang-dong, I hope you go once and just throw yourself into it.

Everyone is friendly, and it’s really not that hard to navigate.