Their hardest problem was never the leather. It was people. A craft this old needs master hands, and the best of them are scattered across the world—while the work sits in a small town they’ve never heard of. You can’t recruit someone to a story they don’t know exists.

Townsend had everything a craftsperson would want in: a rare Old-World craft carried into the modern era, a culture that trains people from the ground up, values held across generations of family ownership. None of it was visible from outside the building. The exact thing that would make someone move across the world for this job was the thing no one could see.

We came at it the way we come from—documentary. Two films, two jobs. The first told the company’s story: the history, the craft, the values that don’t bend. The second was built to recruit. Their pitch to a recruit was never “arrive finished”—it was bring the hands and the patience, we’ll teach you the rest, because this is a craft you can’t fake. One master leatherworker in the films had built his career in Pakistan; Townsend brought him in and trained him into their way of doing it.

Years later, both films are still working. Townsend credits them with lifting applications by roughly 30%—and the recruitment piece still does the talking before a candidate ever visits. The heritage film picked up a second job no one scoped: it helps buyers understand why leather made this way is worth choosing over synthetic. Two stories, told once, still earning their keep.

The story that makes people choose you—to buy from you, to build a life working for you—is usually the one you’re standing too close to tell. Told right, once, it keeps working long after the shoot wraps.