Freckle + Hide – The Origin Story

So you want to hear about how it all began? Come on it and take a seat……..

Once upon a time there was a disillusioned scientist who felt like she had lost her way.  She was tired of the constant battles over sharpies at work  (permanent markers are the currency in any self respecting lab) and felt like her creativity was being suffocated underneath the anonymous white coat and nitrile gloves.  She longed for the freedom of a life without SOPs and COSHH regulations, and the luxury of using acronyms without having to spell them out in full the first time she used them. 

Then she had an epiphany. 

She was dropping some waste off at the local dump (ok, that probably isn’t the most likely place for a life changing epiphany but bear with me) when she spotted an old sofa that had been unceremoniously dumped.  The crumpled look of the leather and sagging of it’s cushions made her heart sink.  This was where sofas were taken at the end of their life, and this sofa knew it.  It was to be euthanised before it’s time, not even in a dignified way but after sitting for hours under leaking bin bags and discarded mdf furniture.  This sofa was beyond help but she knew that she couldn’t let other sofas be resigned to this terrible fate.  There had to be a better way.

And so Freckle + Hide was born. 

A cross between a rehoming centre for abandoned sofas, a leather beauty parlour and a counselling service, sofas are preened and pampered like an A list celebrity before the Oscars.  They are washed and massaged, stroked and soothed until they are ready for their new life as bags and wallets.  The sofas were often traumatised by their treatment before they arrive and so a gentle touch is often required.  Coaxing them out of their shells so they learn to trust humans again.  But it is worth the effort.  The leather of these sofas, made soft from hundreds of warm bottoms, is of the highest quality and the signs of their previous life give character to the products they are made into.  The sofas are proud of their new lives as bags and wallets, because they know they are trailblazers in the zero waste movement.