Made in Connecticut: Leather Man Ltd./Eliza B.
Belts and flip-flops have been their business for decades. News 12’s Rebecca Surran travels to Leather Man Ltd. and Eliza B.’s production floor in Essex for this week’s Made in Connecticut.
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With more than 50 years under their belt, the team at Leather Man Ltd. in Essex knows exactly how to make the rubber meet the road. “It is made by somebody. It's cut by somebody. It's sewn by somebody. The belt buckle is sewn on by somebody.”
It was started by two gentlemen in 1967, John Randall and Peter Dooney of Dooney & Bourke fame. Their first location was over a pizza parlor—it was quiet, the overhead was cheap, and they hatched a company. Its name was inspired by a folklore figure: the Leather Man, a vagrant said to have roamed the roads of New York and Connecticut in the late 1800s. What made him unique was that he wore a suit made of leather that weighed 60 pounds.
Times were different in 1986 when Linda and Cecil Lyon bought the company. Yacht clubs, universities, and even President George H.W. Bush embraced the style. By the late ’90s, the Lyons’ daughter Eliza had an idea—a high school project designing sandals. It became Eliza B. flip-flops in all colors, styles, and sizes. “He threads it through the rubber piece, which has slots cut for the straps. But then what he'll do is he'll put it on that mold, which tells him the appropriate length of the strap for the size that he needs to build.”
Flip-flops, belts, and more—which the company says are perfect for the flats, fairway, and foredeck, like at sea on Bravo TV. “Our belts have been featured on Below Deck.” Whether for the elite or everyday folk, Leather Man says all of its products represent high-quality goods, handcrafted in Connecticut with care by the people who make them. “People who believe in what they're doing here and believe in the product and take great pride in it—and that has served us well all these years.”
