E-Leather takes off

Market

E-Leather for bus interiors was first to find favour on driver’s seats and since its launch over 4,000 have been trimmed in it for Arriva, First, Stagecoach and others.

In the bus market the rise in popularity has been meteoric, with over 1,000 buses specified with seats trimmed in it in only three years. In many ways it is the right product at the right time. Operators want to enhance the travelling experience for customers and E-Leather provides a tangible uplift in the quality of the passenger journey, at an initial cost that justifies the investment and with wear characteristics that match the demands of a modern bus or coach.

Embroidery is much more easily accomplished than on traditional leather

Carl explained that uptake from large operators is increasing, encouraged by a positive response from passengers. Among the examples I have seen are some the Stagecoach Gold fleet and Arriva’s new Sapphire brand, both of which use E-Leather to very good effect. It is one of a package of elements that have seen healthy passenger growth generated on these premium services.

Golden Tours’ MCV bodied Volvo B9TL Harry Potter buses have E-Leather trimmed seats. Shouldn’t they have a third deck?

A recent customer was the Plymouth Citybus operation of Go-Ahead which has specified E-Leather on 20 ADL Enviro400 double deckers on its Tavistock route, while in London, Golden Tours has gone for red and cream in the interior of the MCV bodied Volvo double deckers that carry all over advertising for the ‘The Making of Harry Potter.’ Nottingham City Transport has 40 ADL Enviro400s and 33 Enviro200s trimmed in green/grey E-Leather with piping and embroidery on the way, while earlier this year Perrymans took 12 Optare Versas. In this last order, eight buses had the trim applied to Esteban Civic V3 seats and four to three point belted Rescroft seats.

An early adopter was Lothian Buses who had their Airlinks trimmed in it in March 2010, while vehicles that many will have seen are the ADL demonstration fleet and show exhibits, several of which have featured E-Leather in the last few years. In May of the same year First had the vehicles for its Bristol Flyer trimmed and when inspected this June as they approached 200,000 miles they were still in fine fettle. Cleaning only requires soap, water and an Autoglym magic sponge.

Not all of the buses receiving E-Leather are new, some, such as McGills, have had it applied to completely refurbished ex London Citaros, the buses Arriva is using on Sapphire are refurbishments, while in Northern Ireland, Translink have fully retrimmed an open top Olympian double deck, including many of the surfaces.

Perhaps the most unusual application is Grayline of Bicester which had the Lazzerini Practico seats in three Wheel Forward WrightBus Streetlites trimmed in it for a service between Bicester Station and a nearby designer outlet. When this proved so popular that bigger buses were needed, the seats were removed and installed in a Door Forward Streetlite, with some extras supplied to make up the full complement.

The Newport logo embossed on a headrest on an ADL Enviro400

Cross River embroidery for Arriva

An increasing number of operators are opting for embroidery on the headrests to promote the brand, a particularly attractive example being 33 deckers used by Arriva on the Cross Rivers service from its Birkenhead depot. Carl explained that E-Leather is much easier to embroider than traditional leather and can be handled on normal machine settings. For this reason it is ‘dramatically cheaper’ to apply embroidery. In a variation on this theme, Newport’s Enviro400 deckers have the Newport logo embossed on the headrests, and Arriva has also used this approach on some buses, albeit in a more restrained manner than Newport. In Cardiff, the Baycar Scania OmniCity fleet has been retrimmed by Hants & Dorset Trim and in addition to having the name embossed it has also been hand printed, giving it additional depth.