Repairing Pull - Up Leather marks

One of my long distance customers stopped by the store today and showed me photos of his Hancock and Moore Tuscany Harness sofas in his mountain rental property in Tennessee. Some kid had taken an object and written their name in the sofa, and in the photos it was quite severe and all over the pieces on both sides. I was pretty shocked by the photos - what's wrong with people that let their kids do this to someone else's property? Then have the gall to walk away from it as if it were nothing.....

He called Hancock and Moore customer service and they sent him a bottle of colored touch-up. Well, that's not going to work. Tuscany is an oil and wax infused Italian pull up hide and you can't apply some color to it, won't work. I know people like to call Customer Service at H&M to get to "the source" of things, but those ladies that work on the phones are not up to speed on such things - no slight on them - but they don't have field experience with repairs. Some of them have been there just six months and I have thirty years experience at this sort of thing, so ...... just sayin', what seems to be the best place to get advice may not be!

First thing I did was go get a large sample of Tuscany Harness off the sample rack by my desk and then brought it out to the counter. I took a pair of needle nose pliers and writing as hard as I could with the tip of the pliers scratched "J A K E" into the leather to simulate what I saw in his photos. Did a pretty good job of messing up my sample swatch, too. Then I grabbed a Leather Solutions Pull-Up care kit, which has Pull-up Wax and Pull-up Oil in it.

First I rubbed the " J A K E" as hard as I could with the ball of my fist, putting pressure and heat into the affected area. Step 2 was to continue that rubbing with the Pull-up Oil, and once that was massaged into the hide we did the same with the Pull-up Creme. This gave us appx a 60% improvement in the mark, but it was still visible. Time to try something else.

Since it was a sample and we can mess it up, I brought out the 0000 Steel Wool and used with the Pull-Up Oil as a lubricant and wool-ed down the area. That did the trick, it virtually eliminated the "J A K E" I had scratched in there with the pliers. However Steel wool "sheds" and that manifests as a darker color in that area by about 10% more than the surrounding sections, but that was very acceptable considering the alternative. I would say we got the repair to 95% at that point, which was pretty good. Customer was pleased and bought a kit to take to his rental cabin and try to repair the areas himself. I wish him luck!

Oh my goodness, what was this child doing? Fortunately, you were able to fix it. I know that owner is so grateful to you. You told me how to get blue ink out of a white sofa. I am still so grateful to you.

Wow that sounds like a nice rental. I hope it had a heft security deposit. I hope it works as well on pen that has been on the sofa longer as it did on the sample. I would love to see before and after pictures!