Eagle Ottawa Seeks Hold on Market

It Hardly Would Seem Necessary for a 140-year-old company to introduce itself to the world, but given its new strategy, that's the irony of leather supplier Eagle Ottawa LLC.

A typically modest company despite its industry-best 20% market share and a presence on more than 100 vehicle programs worldwide, Eagle Ottawa steps center stage recently with Interauto 2008 to trumpet a more vertically integrated structure and new product lineup.

“We want to be a systems supplier, but not a Tier 1,” says Patrick Catlin, vice president-sales and business development at the Auburn Hills, MI, supplier. “We want to expand into value-added services.”

Eagle Ottawa wants to solidify its leadership in an increasingly global market with new services such as component wrapping, lamination and sewing, as well as special leather effects such as tone-on-tone tipping, badging and custom perforation and stitching.

Or as Eagle Ottawa design chief Pat Oldenkamp says, the supplier will move from providing “off-the-shelf” products to “highly crafted and stylized” offerings.

At its Interauto 2008 product preview in Warren, MI, Eagle Ottawa displays an extended-wheelbase Cadillac SLS with a raft of content, including a leather instrument-panel wrap and upper door-panel trim with its solar reflective leather.

The solar reflective product stays cooler in hot temperatures, which previously prevented OEMs from using leather on interior parts exposed to the sun in some markets. It reflects 50% of the sun's rays.

The company brings its component-wrapping capability to the U.S. for the first time this year after performing the service at its Shanghai, China, facility during the last 18 months for OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in the Asia/Pacific region. Eagle Ottawa says it can perform the work itself in North America.

Jayne VanOpynen, Eagle Ottawa's West Coast-based design director, says component wrapping with French seams will continue to grow in popularity.

“What's going to further define luxury?” she asks. “Adding more natural materials and more authentic materials. Adding more leather wherever you can.”

Eagle Ottawa also shows a new premium-grade, Opus-brand leather with what it calls a “furniture-feel,” as well as a leather that cleans easier and one that resists soiling altogether.

On the environmental front, Eagle Ottawa shows leathers produced with low volatile organic compounds and says it has begun recycling glue shavings into a substrate material closely resembling leather.

“Glue shaving used to be about the only waste product at Eagle Ottawa,” says Nathan Mullinix, vice president-research and development. Mullinix also notes other industry firsts, such as water-based finishing systems, mass-produced chrome-free automotive leather and over-spray reducing roll-coating technology.

Altogether, Eagle Ottawa's Interauto 2008 collection includes 22 new leather grains and 44 new textures. It plans to show the collection to more than 500 designers and materials-engineering experts globally within the next year.

The company expects content levels of non-luxury vehicles to richen through more widespread leather application as new-car buyers downsize. But VanOpynen does not anticipate OEMs will throw the cheapest grade available at the lower end of the market.

Advances in prototyping and mass production make surface effects, such as perforation, more affordable for OEMs seeking to differentiate the interior of a high-volume product at a lower cost.

Expect a migration away from beige and black — North America's standby leather colors for many years — to punchier colors such as red, orange, yellow, green and lavender.

Also coming are softer, more natural-looking patterns, as well as random, non-linear stripes and opposites and contrasts, such as high-gloss effects combined with matte leathers.

GST AutoLeather Repositions for Global Growth WardsAuto.com/ar/gst_repositions_global/