Hides and skins form domestic livestock are potentially valuable agricultural products, especially suited for export. Their processing can provide employment and extra income for rural dwellers. This booklet outlines the opportunities for generating income by producing and trading hides and skins. [NOTE: The main target audience for the FAO Diversification booklets are people and organizations that provide advisory, business and technical support to small-scale farmers and local communities in low and middle-income countries, as well as policy makers and programme managers. They are not intended to be technical "how to do it "guidelines; however, each booklet identifies additional sources of information, technical support and websites.]

This study provides an overview of how the Bangladeshi leather value chain is organised and governed. It analyses how the leather processing and leather goods/footwear subsectors are integrated into the global market and to what extent informal arrangements including illicit practices are conducive to global market entry. Power relations are dissected along the value chain, in order to analyse how local producers adapt to upholding competitiveness. The results of the work show the need to devise upgrading strategies which pay heed to the reality of informal dynamics in a global value chain (GVC) to improve the local producers’ competitiveness. The GVC perspective was combined with considerations on upgrading, subcontracting, middlemen and informality to adequately analyse the complexity of the transactions in the chain. The data of this study are drawn from empirical field studies in Dhaka, Bangladesh and other sections of the international leather value chain during the time period of 2010 to 2014. A qualitative research approach was complemented with quantitative methods.