"European Russia" - embossed on a piece of the thinnest leather of a warm color. The parchment lies in a prominent place in the Shadi store in the city of Nazran, and it is impossible to guess its origin without a hint. To the touch - softer than huskies, only the skin is not lamb's. The material for the reprint of the pre-revolutionary map was squid - more precisely, secondary raw materials from its processing.
"The skin of a squid is like gold leaf, it can be used to cover any material. A specialist will not distinguish a reptile. For example, cow skin with an embossed crocodile and a squid on top. Usually, the thinner the skin, the" richer "it looks, and the squid is five times the thinnest thing that modern industry produces."
Akhmed Shadiev, a resident of Ingushetia, was the first in the world to come up with a technology for making the skin of a giant squid. For 14 years now, he has been developing methods of processing the skins of the inhabitants of the deep sea, turning them into materials with high consumer properties. In 2011, he organized in Ingushetia the first and so far the only industrial enterprise in Russia for the processing of fish skin with the Shadi brand and, together with his partner Alexander Mishin, owns a workshop in Pyatigorsk, where they sew a variety of haberdashery products from the skin of salmon, carp, sturgeon, trout and grass carp …
"A fish skin is three times stronger than a bovine hide," he says.
For centuries, the Far Eastern peoples have been sewing clothes and shoes from fishing waste. But the material they used cannot formally be called leather. These are raw skins, simply dried during the year in the wind and mashed with sticks. Products made from them cannot be washed, and they do not differ in softness. An Ingush businessman has figured out how to make fish skins so that the material meets the modern standards of expensive elite leathers. And most importantly, he was the first in the world to develop not handicraft, but industrial technology for this.
Shorn fish
"Oh, I have all my hands in glue," says Faina Gazdieva, manager of the Shadi enterprise.
In her free time from organizational concerns, she is engaged in creativity in full view of customers in the Shadi brand salon in Nazran - she glues the picture "Autumn Landscape" from pieces of leather. Three more craftswomen sew cosmetic bags and passport covers, put rivets on key holders, and glue jewelry. This small workshop at the salon is an addition to the main sewing production in Pyatigorsk, where they produce items of a more complex cut: representative sets "for the manager's table", gift albums about Ingushetia, handbags and even shoes.
“People always ask themselves whether they are fake or not, and they are interested in seeing how all this is happening here,” explains Faina.
On several racks hung the entire assortment of ready-made fish skins - tanned to a flexible state, odorless and resistant to wear and tear. Varnish, hologram, just paint - there are more than a hundred colors in the catalog. The company counts the countries where the goods were sent to fellow haberdashers at different times. There are already more than 40 import directions.
“Fish skin is a material with character,” says Faina. In her hands is a processed carp skin. This species has large scales, and after its removal, wide pockets remain - the semi-finished product has to be cut before painting. The sturgeon is considered the most labor-intensive material. Hard thorns on its ridge are first mechanically "flattened", and then chemically softened according to a special recipe. Akhmed Shadiev keeps it in the strictest confidence. In the salon there are several decorative vases made of sturgeon leather, which decorate small haberdashery with thorns.
“It took me six months to invent just a way to make high-quality fish skin, and it took me another seven years of hard labor to create industrial technology. Today, we are the only ones who created it, and this is not a question of immodesty,” says Ahmed.
Shadi has been one of the main brands of Ingushetia for many years. Shopping is included in the routes for tourist groups, there are stands with goods in a few hotels, and the republic's leadership presents fish skin souvenirs to guests. Once a folder with an embossed "President of the Russian Federation" and a portrait of the first person made in the technique of collage from salmon skin were even taken to the Kremlin.
Material from the darkness of the ages
"We all told him: leave it! We didn't believe it, but he achieved his goal. And he is still constantly improving the technology."
One of the craftswomen, the cutter Zalikhan, is the sister of the owner Shadi. She is a professional light dress cutter, and her skills came in handy when her brother opened production in his historic homeland. Both were born in Kazakhstan, and then lived in Volgograd for many years. This explains the mystery of the appearance of the sturgeon in Ingushetia.
“We have a huge family, we had to work since childhood,” Akhmed says. “Somewhere in 1989 I saw an opportunity to earn money. There was such a specialist San Sanych in Stavropol at that time, he had tanned leather almost from the time of the revolution, and I went to see him. to study.
Shadiev mastered working with cow leather and chevro goat, opened a cooperative and even before the collapse of the USSR he managed to sew five thousand leather jackets. Then the wave of Turkish imports made the production of high-quality local goods unprofitable. For some time Akhmed traded in chemistry for other manufacturers, and then accidentally read that in the wilds of the Ussuri region from the skins of freshwater fish from ancient times they sewed linen, and mittens, and tents, and even threads with which all this was fastened. Craftsmen of the Far East make such products even now.
"This is a semi-finished product, raw raw materials, organic matter - the so-called" pelt ". You cannot sew anything from it with a machine. And leather is considered leather when it has passed the tanning stage. The skin must be degreased, softened, removed proteins and collagen, and then all this must be fixed ".
Small quantities of fish skin in the world are now tanned by only five small producers, including those in the fishing grounds of Iceland and Norway, and Shadi has imitators in Russia as well. But all these industries Shadiev calls "handicraft". Their technologies are not designed for industrial scale, and he himself, back in the 1990s, saw a global and still unoccupied market in recyclable materials.
"Just take it away"
On the shelves in the Shadi salon there are rows of shoes - men's shoes and women's sneakers with a scaly relief for 10-12 thousand rubles. for a couple. Exclusive bags - from 14 thousand rubles. If not for Shadiev, then all this splendor would have been burned or buried in the ground, as is most often the case with fish skins in Russia.
"Due to the leap in technology, mechanically removed fish skins are formed in industrial volumes. There are 300 species of commercial fish in the world. More than half of the volume of salmon is already cultivated artificially, and mankind's demand for fillets is only increasing."
Shadiev is an economist by education and has long understood that tougher waste management will sooner or later create demand for his technologies. Calcium-containing fish bones and head are now at best used as a supplement in fur farms. Some skin is processed into collagen for cosmetology and medicine. But the bulk of the by-products of the fishing industry is destroyed, causing damage to the environment. In the European Union, recycling costs about 12 eurocents per ton.
"A year ago, a company in St. Petersburg offered me eight tons of skins for free, that's roughly 100 thousand pieces - just take it. And how much recyclable materials are generated in China! One average Chinese company is ready to send a million skins a month."
Free - this is only self-pickup from the conveyor. Typically, the supplier would need to freeze the waste for Shadi and store it until the batch is formed, which is a cost. Therefore, Shadiev buys skins. A little in Moscow, a little in Astrakhan, a little in Europe, and the squid comes from Peru: 90% of the giant squid is caught in this country.
However, the tannery in Nazran is now standing still. Soaking, degreasing, softening, tanning, painting, fatliquoring and finishing are all suspended. Raw materials are in freezers, the workshop and the Pyatigorsk sewing workshop are working on previously produced stocks. Shadiev, who has just returned from abroad, explains:
“You see, we have invested a lot in a plant in Ingushetia, have reached a serious level, we have CNC equipment (numerical control - TASS). But now I am staying here only in the hope that some state programs will appear. the state approach, without it our company simply drifts."
Once upon a time, Swarovski jewelry manufacturer became interested in squid skin from Shadi. For such a customer, it was necessary to import a large batch of frozen raw materials and, most importantly, to expand production. Shadiev even found an investor, but failed to resolve the issue with the land plot. There are other difficulties: for example, there are always problems with the import of frozen skins - the goods are rare, and the customs are suspicious.
- The inventor has such a fate - obstacles and misunderstanding. But I'm just getting hardened,”says Ahmed.
Become a technology patriot
- We will definitely make custom-made bags of crazy colors. As soon as I got a job, all my friends asked about it. They spread 15 thousand rubles for fake replicas, but we have the original,”says Faina Gazdieva, showing the bag of mass production.
Recently, Shadi skins have undergone rigorous certification in the Italian Ancona, and now the company will be able to work with the largest fashion houses. But Akhmed Shadiev himself wants to become a global brand and is now changing his strategy. At home, he will only have tailoring under his own brand and a network of outlets (there are partner stores in Moldova and Kazakhstan).
- I am negotiating with Norway, Vietnam and Portugal on the opening of tanneries. And if I get on my feet in Europe, then here too Shadi will begin to develop. This business cannot be tied to one country, it is large-scale. This is a whole new industry, a new direction in the leather industry.
In Russia, the Ingush brand has also outlined a new scheme of cooperation with fish processing. Shadiev recently signed an agreement with a large plant in Murmansk, which wants to organize production next to the conveyor. Especially for them, Shadiev developed a technology for the processing of cod leather for souvenir products. The representatives of the plant will be trained at the tannery in Nazran. And, accordingly, work on Shadi technology.
“I understood the main thing - I have to become a patriot of my technologies. And who needs them - it does not depend on me,” says Shadiev.
Olga Kalantarova
