The Story of Mercy Industries

In a world flooded with mass produced BDSM and leather gear we found it increasingly difficult to acquire good quality products. We encountered restraints, gags, whips and harnesses, many pieces that were sold as being leather, but didn’t feel like leather, didn’t smell like leather and most importantly did not last like leather would (or even worse – broke during play!).

After one particularly frustrating experience with buying an expensive set of leather cuffs that turned out to be poor quality we decided buy our own leather hide and make a set ourselves! So entranced with the joy of creating something amazing from high quality leather we soon made all our own gear. This then lead to the spark of the idea that maybe it would be a cool hobby to sell our custom made leather gear online.  

Given my penchant for online shopping I thought Etsy would be the perfect place to test out our theory that there was a huge market for high quality handcrafted leather BDSM gear. The rest as they say is history.

Mercy Industries launched on Etsy initially with a focus on heavy duty bondage gear. The workshop was our small backyard shed, where we experimented and learnt a lot about how to make the highest quality leather gear. We discovered all the differences in leather and where to locally source the best possible leather hides. We learnt that hand stitching leather is very hard and laborious, so we bought a second hand leather sewing machine. We wanted to be able to custom engrave the leather and pendants so saved up to get a laser engraving machine. I wanted more variety in my leather gear so we invested in a range of coloured leathers and rose gold hardware. We saw a lack of gear with a more delicate and feminine style so created the Aurum and Aphrodite series to reflect these in the store. Before we knew it Mercy Industries was taking off and we became one of the highest rated premium handcrafted leather BDSM gear producers on Etsy. We were able to upgrade to a purpose built workshop with amazing new sewing machines and also excitingly stretch our wings and start our own stand alone web store – mercyindustries.com.

We have so many exciting things planned for Mercy Industries in the future and cannot wait to bring you along for the journey! While we have grown from our early days in the backyard shed, we will always stay true to our original desire for Mercy Industries. We will never 'sell out' and start stocking mass produced leather gear like many others in this business. We want to be known for creating the highest quality leather BDSM gear that is handmade here in Australia with the love that Mercy Industries was founded on.