Sustainability and Our Philosophy

Hi there, it’s Peg here — the Master Cobbler behind MooBuzz® All-Natural Leather Protection. Have you tried our products yet? They’re born of my experience creating, restoring, and repairing quality leather goods and my desire to create simple, effective products with respect for the environment.

By opening my shoe repair and custom leather shop in 2006, I wanted to fix all kinds of leather items — to help customers keep their old stuff working and reduce the number of ‘things’ in the universe. Plus, fixing things meant keeping the landfills a little less full.

I learned a lot.

Like all sorts of things are so poorly made that fixing them is not always worth the effort or cost to do so. Companies around the world have searched for, and found, the cheapest labor on earth — making us accustomed to artificially low prices on things we expect to be “durable.” And I’ve also learned that paying for high-priced, brand names no longer guarantees quality. What does this all mean??

To me, it means that we live in a mismatched world; between production and repair costs, between price and value, and between a customer’s expectation and the real-world life expectancy for a product. This has created a crisis of sustainability. Poor quality goods are too expensive no matter how little they cost — in terms of the natural and human resources that they use up.

But I think we are seeing a positive change in the way many people are shopping for and buying things. They’re buying fewer, better things — and planning to make them last as long as possible. They’re buying goods that are built to make repair possible AND make repair a good idea.

We are a purposely small company.

We focus on quality, value, and great customer service. And in each step of our process, from obtaining raw materials through production and shipping, we try to be stewards of the environment. We buy as local as we can, use recycled or recyclable packaging materials, and intentionally aim to be ‘hands on’ in all aspects of our business. We also give back.

Our commitment to the environment extends to our community of fellow humans near and far. I feel a strong commitment to education and nature. Each year we donate 10% of gross revenue to The Odyssey Project at the University of Wisconsin Madison. This is a nearby community and we are happy to support their amazing work.

We are also committed to helping young people nationwide learn about and experience the outdoors. We support Big City Mountaineers each year by donating 10% of our gross revenue. After all, it was my love of the outdoors and living for a time in a remote part of northern Wisconsin that birthed my desire to create products that help protect and preserve leather footwear and other gear.