His story
He started with 450 Egyptian pounds and two rings.
Shady Elzregy—Owner of a natural-leather workshop·Cairo
I started with 450 pounds — that was all I had.
Before leather, Shady was a student at the Faculty of Specific Education, working with metal. During Ramadan, in the middle of exam season, he took what little capital he had to Haret El Yahud, bought a small gas cylinder, a blowtorch and a quarter-kilo of copper wire, carried it home himself, and made his first two rings. Then he sold them.
He showed the work to a gallery downtown, and within three months his pieces were on display in three governorates beyond Cairo. The profit from the rings is what let him learn natural leathercraft and move from metal into leather.
He built the workshop on the same principle he started with: one piece at a time, by one pair of hands. Every piece is still cut, stitched and burnished by hand in the workshop.