As an avid outdoorsman growing up in western Michigan, I began collecting knives when I was a kid. Most of the knives I had bought back then didn't come with sheaths, and just before deer season of 1989 I decided to make a sheath for my favorite hunting knife. I bought a few of the basic tools from Tandy Leather Company, along with a thick piece of vegetable tanned leather. The sheath was very basic and functional, but not too pretty. Since I had the tools, I started making more sheaths for my other knives and subsequently got better and better at it. 

That's how my passion of leather crafting began, which has now turned into an obsession. Just ask my wife! She's always complaining about the newest leather tools I buy, as well as the expense of the high quality leather I stricktly use.  

Most everything I make is completely handmade and hand sewn, or Saddle Stitched. I do use an industrial leather sewing machine on a few of my products, such as belts and my custom placemats, however these are more decorative perimeters that are not binding two pieces of leather together.

What had been a passionate hobby has now turned into a business. I own and operate two other businesses, New Way Hearing Aids, Inc., and Michael Knapp & Associates. After making hundreds of leather gifts and personal items, many people kept asking me to make something for them and that they'd pay for it. It really wasn't my intention to do leather crafting as a business, but with all the requests for various handmade leather items I kept receiving, I thought the time had come. That's how Michael Knapp Leather started, and now I'm making and shipping my leatherwork all over the world.

My favorite leather items to make are my various styles of Wallets. But my real speciality are Full Grain Leather Placemats. Nobody else really does these. They are very time consuming, and a lot of leather and materials are used in order to make them, which means they aren't cheap. However, I guarantee them for a lifetime! 

​All of the leather I use is of the highest quality. Most of my items are made with Chromexcel (or CXL) Leather from Horween Leather Co., located in Chicago. Horween has been in business since 1905, and they developed Chromexcel in 1913. Chromexcel goes through 89 separate steps to process, it takes 28 business days to make, and is one of the highest quality of leathers in the world.