Episode 643 - AG Gregoroff || The King Of Sustainable Leather

Summary

---

Episode Summary: The King of Sustainable Leather (Ep. 643, May 5, 2026)

Podcast: The Origins Foundation Podcast
Guest: AG Gregoroff (Owner, Toe Hold Flip Flops)
Host: The Origins Foundation

---

Episode Overview

This episode features AG Gregoroff, owner of luxury flip-flop brand Toe Hold, who is renowned for his use of rare, sustainably sourced exotic leathers. The conversation dives deep into the ethics, craftsmanship, and storylines behind sustainable leather products—from elephant and rhino to reindeer and stingray—while also discussing controversial marketing, social media hurdles, and the direct ties between sustainable use hunting and conservation. AG’s frankness, humor, and fierce pride in his work and values shine throughout, making for an engaging and insightful discussion about the intersection of hunting, trade, and sustainability.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Purple Cow" Approach: Unique Branding in a Crowded Market

• AG’s approach stands apart in the leather goods industry, embracing controversy and bold marketing.
• Marketing with Personality: AG uses provocative imagery and content, humorously stating: “Our Instagram for the last nine years has just been hot chicks, a little bit of flip flops, and really just me making fun of liberals.” (11:37)
• This has led to repeated social media bans, but AG simply recovers and continues, underscoring the resilience and edge of his brand.
• Memorable Quote:
  • “If you’re the type of person that gets tired of looking at hot chicks, you’re not the type of person I want to sell flip flops to.” (12:18, AG Gregoroff)

2. Quality and Craftsmanship Over Mass Production

• Exclusivity and Customization: Toe Hold’s clientele are collectors, with some owning dozens or even over a hundred pairs, often competing to obtain unique editions. (12:42)
• Technical Evolution: AG is perpetually refining product designs, testing versions for years and focusing on wear patterns, environmental impacts, and minute design details (13:54).
• Leathers Sourced and Stories Told: Elephant, rhino, hippo, crocodile, giraffe, zebra, stingray, reindeer, and more. Stories behind the materials—like leather from man-killing elephants or hippos—add unique value, rivaling major luxury brands in exclusivity. (19:54 onwards)

3. The Science and Story of Exotic Leathers

• Natural Colors and Tanning: Elephant leather color varies based on the animal’s life and environment, with minerals and tanning methods playing key roles. AG emphasizes he never dyes elephant leather—instead, natural processes create unique effects. (18:00)
• Highest Standards: Only selects the best sections of rare hides; Toe Hold holds two world records for rarest flip-flops, besting even luxury fashion giants. (19:53)

4. Sustainable Use and Ethical Sourcing

• Supporting Conservation:
  • “The amount of money we spend, hundreds of thousands of dollars, that go directly back to park funding...it’s better to send money back there and have them spend it how they see fit than it is to send no money back there.” (33:08, AG Gregoroff)
• The sourcing process follows strict legal compliance (e.g., CITES permits, working with wildlife departments, and tribal authorities for polar bear and walrus materials). (23:43)
• Thoughtful discussion on the necessity of managing wildlife populations to benefit local communities and ecosystems, leveraging sustainable hunting for resource management. (34:06)

5. The Realities of the Leather Trade

• Difficulties and Rarity:
  • Some leathers (like rhino, polar bear, eagle ray) are extremely limited due to legal and ethical obstacles.
  • AG recounts stories of sourcing rare hides through unique customer requests, sometimes through unusual circumstances (like a divorce sale!). (22:56)
• Processing Challenges:
  • Certain materials, e.g. reindeer and rabbit, are challenging to work with due to the mess created in production, leading to highly exclusive product runs like reindeer slippers. (29:00)

6. Customer Community & Engagement

• AG prides himself on direct and enthusiastic engagement with customers via Instagram, often responding instantly and cultivating an energetic, loyal fanbase.

---

Highlighted Leathers & Their Characteristics

(Segment Timestamps Approximate)

• Elephant (22:04 – 22:19): Most popular; incredibly durable, beautiful grain; expensive and tightly regulated.
• Rhino (22:21 – 22:56): Extremely rare; typically customer-provided.
• Polar Bear & Seal (23:10 – 23:32): Requires tribal partnerships and strict legal compliance.
• Giraffe (24:13 – 24:44): Suede-like, best for special occasion wear.
• Zebra (25:02 – 26:23): Hair-on and hair-off options; sourcing high-grade pelts is a challenge.
• Stingray (27:00 – 28:34): Mostly from Asia; premier, giant specimens are rare and costly.
• Ostrich, Crocodile, Alligator (28:39 onward): More broadly available but still subject to high standards.
• Reindeer (28:48 – 30:03): Seasonal hit for slipper products, prized for extreme softness.
• Badger, Lizard, Eagle Ray: Experimental, bespoke products.

---

Notable Quotes

• On Brand Philosophy:
  • “We make the highest quality leather flip flops in the world...they’re not cheap. Average price? Thousand bucks.” (10:36, AG Gregoroff)
• On Sourcing Ethics:
  • “We always make sure we’re following the law...we preemptively kind of share all of our stuff [with wildlife officials].” (24:04, AG Gregoroff)
• On Conservation:
  • “If there’s too many [elephants], it’s too harsh on the land. The land can’t recover...Being able to manage that is a very, very tricky thing.” (34:56, AG Gregoroff)
• On Exclusivity:
  • “We’re not for everybody—and purposely so…You can go buy a pair of flip flops at the gas station for $7. If that suits your need, do it. We’re not for you.” (32:53, AG Gregoroff)

---

Most Memorable Moment

• The Black Dye Incident:
  • The host recounts a story about wearing a pair of black elephant flip-flops into a hotel bath, leading to black footprints all over the tub—leaving a lasting (and literal) mark. (15:58–16:24)

---

How to Connect & Next Steps

• Buy/Contact: Shop exclusive products at toehold.com or DM AG on Instagram (@toehold, 36:35).
• Community: Engage directly with AG and the Toe Hold customer community—the brand is built on personal stories and responsiveness.

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:30–01:35: Host intro; sustainable use narrative
• 04:07–06:44: Brand and marketing "purple cow" philosophy
• 10:36–13:44: Quality, customer stories, and evolving designs
• 14:12–15:02: Technical considerations and long-term product testing
• 17:45–19:53: Leather colors and world records
• 22:04–27:37: Sourcing and features of various exotic leathers
• 29:00–30:23: Reindeer slippers and the creation of new product lines
• 31:16–34:56: Sustainability, conservation funding, and wildlife management

---

Tone:
Frank, irreverent, and proudly opinionated, with plenty of technical detail and behind-the-scenes stories. AG combines old-world craftsmanship with new-world provocativeness, using humor and controversy as integral parts of his brand story.

---

For listeners:
If you’re curious about the ethics behind the exotic leather industry, the true impact of hunting on conservation, or just want the inside scoop on the world’s most unique flip flops, this episode delivers insights, candor, and a dose of irreverent fun.

---

Transcript

[FishingBooker Announcer]

Planning a fishing trip shouldn't feel like a full time job. With fishingbooker.com you can find and book the perfect fishing trip within minutes. FishingBooker.com connects you with trusted fishing captains around the world. Booking is fast, easy and secure with access to verified customer reviews, loyalty rewards, and around the clock customer support. Everything you need to book with confidence is in one place. So head to fishingbooker.com and start planning your next fishing fishing adventure today.

[Podcast Host]

AG Gregoroff is the owner of Toe Hold, a flip flop company that is

[Interviewer]

breaking boundaries and borders number one with

[Podcast Host]

the sustainable leather that they're using for their flip flops. From stingray to elephant to zebra to alligator to ostrich, just amazing leathers that he's using to just the pride of the workmanship that goes into his flip flops. He's not only doing that, he's got wallets, he's got belts, all sorts of things. I think he's coming out with cowboy boots. Anyway, I caught up with AG as I was passing through Vegas. Always love catching up with AG to learn a little bit more about the leather trade, what he's up to. Short Sharp podcast To the point. And unfortunately, AG had a bad shrimp the night before. So not only was Ag up and down, it meant the podcast was up and down. But you'll enjoy it anyway. So five years ago, there was a reason why I started this movement. And the truth then is the truth now that we need to champion our narrative. We need to champion the truth around what we do and who we are.

[Interviewer]

There's a sweet spot with a gun, you know, too heavy and it's a burden to walk with. Too light and you whipping it. Why is the project so important to the hunting community? It's. It's a. I think it's not only important, I think it's. I think it's vital. I think it's. It's just in time.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's like snakes and ladders. You guys climbing the ladder and then somebody does something stupid and you just slide down.

[Podcast Host]

That is such an amazing analogy.

[Interviewer]

Snakes and ladders.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

You know, ivory, in my opinion, was the plastic of its age.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[AG Gregoroff]

Expensive going up. It goes a long way with families. We have families that do need it.

[Podcast Host]

Let me close this door because I

[Interviewer]

have a little wiener dog.

[Podcast Host]

What?

[Interviewer]

You are. You're laughing because I said wiener.

[AG Gregoroff]

I'm really glad you finished this. And it's out. I'm sorry. The first.

[FishingBooker Announcer]

What are we doing here today?

[Interviewer]

You're telling the whole world. Very nice. Cheers. We Got to stop meeting like this, tequila in hand, in Vegas.

[AG Gregoroff]

That's the best way to meet.

[Interviewer]

You know that I don't drink tequila. Outside of me being in Vegas with you, I do not drink sipping tequila.

[AG Gregoroff]

This is the good tequila s for Lenza from the actual distillery in Te Tequila Mexico.

[Interviewer]

And the bottles are all super weird, like you just showed me, like. Oh. Like they're not even, like, normal.

[AG Gregoroff]

They're. Yeah. So they're hand blown. And you can tell the difference between the American ones and the Mexican ones because they'll have the. They'll have a ring on the bottom where you could see if you look here, is that ring on the bottom? Yeah, that's where, like, the glass blower, they hold it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Geez. Crazy.

[Podcast Host]

Well, cheers. Bugger.

[Interviewer]

Good seeing you. You too.

[Podcast Host]

Cheers.

[Interviewer]

If you hear the headset drop, Ag is running off to the bathroom. He had a bad shrimp last night. Trying to fix it with. With reposado.

[AG Gregoroff]

What's up, Mike?

[Interviewer]

How's it going, Mike? Doing good, Robbie. Pleasure to meet you.

[AG Gregoroff]

What's up, bro? Yeah, yeah, yeah, bro. You're live. Four million listeners.

[Interviewer]

AG Gregoroff, welcome back to the Origins Foundation Podcast. Now, it used to be. Last time you were on, it was the Blood Origins podcast changed our name. Do you know that? No. The Origins Foundation.

[AG Gregoroff]

The Origins Foundation. I like it. Sounds good.

[Interviewer]

Sounds good. Sounds proper. Sounds like we're legit.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. Blood may have made people squeamish.

[Interviewer]

Well, it's just, you know, we live in this world of hyperbole. We live in this world of, you know, people will call it a euphemism. Why are you shying away from what you do? But my whole point of existence is to speak to the people in the middle that don't have an idea of what hunting is.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And so it's a little easier to cross that barrier with a name called the Origins foundation versus name called Blood Origins. Blood Origins was great. We needed it. We needed it for the hunting community to be like, okay, these guys are legit. These guys are the real deal, and they are for us. And now that we have the hunting community, now we just move forward.

[AG Gregoroff]

I know when my buddies at Black Rifle Coffee, when they went public, there was some people suggested, well, black Rifle, it sounds kind of, can we change the name? And they're like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. What do you think of this tequila?

[Interviewer]

It's very nice. Very nice. Very smooth.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's a gentleman blend.

[Interviewer]

A German blend.

[AG Gregoroff]

Gentlemen, what do you think of the. What do you think of the new Shop.

[Interviewer]

I love it. I love your Overton. Interesting choice of having a Harley in the middle of the living room.

[AG Gregoroff]

Right in the middle. Nice one, too. $40,000 art piece.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it's got a red light behind it.

[AG Gregoroff]

It is an art as it's easy to take out to ride, it's hard to bring it back in, back it up, get it on the stand, get it against the wall.

[Interviewer]

Geez, man. Crazy.

[AG Gregoroff]

But we could have it out the door in 60 seconds.

[Interviewer]

Well, if people don't know who AG Gregoroff is, introduce yourself.

[AG Gregoroff]

My name is AG Gregoroff.

[Interviewer]

What do you do?

[AG Gregoroff]

What did you say about me on Andy Stump's podcast, the Purple cow thing?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

You know how many people have quoted that to me?

[Interviewer]

I know.

[AG Gregoroff]

I've never heard that quote before.

[Interviewer]

Dude, you need to get the book. So the purple cow for people that don't. So I was on Andy Stumps podcast, Ag. You connected me with Andy. And I said to Andy, I said, you know that Ag is a purple cow? And he's like, what are you talking about? And I said, well, there's a book called the Purple Cow, and there's. There's what it is. It's all about marketing. And a purple cow is essentially, you look out onto a pasture of cows, and it's Jersey cows. Say, like black and white cows, and they're all the same. So everyone's doing the same out there, right? Whatever industry you're in, and let's just call it flip flops, I. E. The industry you're in. And the first thing that you see in this field is the purple cow that's you. And it's the reason. Because it's flip flops and tits and ass.

[AG Gregoroff]

That's it.

[Interviewer]

That's it.

[AG Gregoroff]

And. And not so much flip flops.

[Interviewer]

And yeah, not even the pictures of the girls have flip flops in it.

[Podcast Host]

It is 2026, and, my friends, big changes have happened in the world of firearm suppressors. The $200 tax stamp fee is now gone. Huge win for hunters, huge win for shooters, and a huge win for your wallets. If you're thinking about elevating your shooting experience and adding a suppressor. Silence Essential is the best way to shop. And you don't even have to get off your couch to do it. Go to silenceessential.com, browse hundreds of suppressor options. They literally have all of the popular makes and models. Then their experts will walk you through setting up your account, creating a free NFA trust, and then submitting your Application to the atf. Once approved, Silencer Central ships your new suppressor directly to your door. That's when you're going to have to essentially get off the couch. It's a game changer, guys. If you haven't done it yet, do it. The old days of waiting eight to 10 months on a suppressor are gone. It's more like two weeks. Some have even gotten their suppressors in shorter timeframes. It's never been easier to start shooting suppressed. Get started today by visiting silencercentral.com it's really the simplest way to get your suppressors. Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and. Or your conservation wish. Could be managing whitetails, could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle. Cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards, as well as optics. Everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email us, DM us, message us, whatever you want. We are not hard to find.

[AG Gregoroff]

Good luck now.

[Interviewer]

So that's why I called.

[AG Gregoroff]

Now we'll crop them out. If we're doing like a full. If we're doing a photo shoot and we used to pan up from like the feet all the way up, you know, to. With a hot chick. But Instagram and social media so fast nowadays you have a half a second to capture people.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely.

[AG Gregoroff]

So we just start on the tits and then as you're panning down to the flip flops, I'll cut the scene.

[Interviewer]

Everyone's listening to this podcast. Okay, Robbie, what do we. This is. This is the Origins foundation podcast. What are you talking about?

[AG Gregoroff]

Everybody's going to our website right now and our Instagram.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Purple cow. Purple cow.

[AG Gregoroff]

The reason we did that.

[Interviewer]

I'm so glad you had never heard about that. I'm so glad I'm the guy that brought it to Andy and that you

[AG Gregoroff]

get good friends and he's a good friend of mine, but we couldn't be more different on, like, the marketing, the strategy, the idea, the stuff like that. Like, he's very.

[Interviewer]

But you lose your Instagram all the time.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, yeah. It's been down multiple times, but you get it back. We do.

[Interviewer]

You get the original back. It's not like you lose the 750, 000 that you have. Right?

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, we. We have.

[Interviewer]

You have somebody at Meta that you just talk to and go ahead. I'm down again.

[AG Gregoroff]

And you know what they do is they report our ads as being underage. They report them as being. What's the other one? Bullying. They're just trigger words. Then, you know, you do it enough. It's usually. It's usually conservationists. If you call them whatever the. They call those people, environmentalists.

[Interviewer]

They're not conservationists. That's what they call is people who get offended.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, it's people that are habitually offended by what we do. And really, you know, so what we do do is we make the most. We make the. The highest.

[Interviewer]

Push your color down.

[AG Gregoroff]

We make the highest quality leather flip flops in the world. There we go. Better.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

And they're not cheap. They're not cheap.

[Interviewer]

Average. Average pay.

[AG Gregoroff]

Thousand bucks.

[Interviewer]

Thousand bucks.

[AG Gregoroff]

We use elephant Ryan.

[Interviewer]

I want to get into all. Yeah, today I want to do leathers.

[AG Gregoroff]

We'll do all specifically with you. But so we. Early on, I've always been Republican, super conservative conservative, like in the normal sense. But I got neck tattoos and stuff. You know, not conservative like, in that sense. But we knew from the very first day that, like, liberals hated the fact that we used leather. I knew because we had jiu jitsu buddies that their girlfriends. Oh, you guys use leather? Just cow leather. Like, they, they. They're so ignorant to. To the system of things that we were like, well, these people are never going to support us anyways, and I hate them to begin with, so let's just make fun of them. So our Instagram for the last nine years has just been hot chicks, a little bit of flip flops, and really just me making fun of liberals.

[Interviewer]

Check your color. There's something touching that mic constantly. There we go. Move that, move that.

[AG Gregoroff]

Let me just take this off.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, move that thing off to. There we go.

[AG Gregoroff]

You get a little feedback.

[Interviewer]

No, you can just hear, like, the something touching it.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's my big traps, bro. There we go. How's that?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's good. It's good now.

[AG Gregoroff]

And so that's. That's all our Instagram has been. And if you have a cooking podcast, it's not going to be long before people are just tired of watching you cook, and people are going to be tired of watching you chop wood or whatever it might be. That you do. People are eventually get tired of that. People get tired of watching us make flip flops. But if you're the type of person that gets tired of looking at hot chicks, you're not the type of person I want to sell flip flops to.

[Interviewer]

Hilarious. Now, you were saying in the vehicle over here. I didn't. You couldn't obviously see my reaction. But you have people who buy 40 pairs of flim lops a year.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, yeah, we have. I think.

[Interviewer]

Are they just buying different styles? Is that.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Are they just like, oh, I want that. I want that unique combination, everything.

[AG Gregoroff]

So it's a mixture between the bulk of. I mean, 40. We got guys that have 100 pairs or over 100 pairs. And it's everywhere from ag. I'm send you two or three grand. Just make me something cool. Like they don't want to know anymore. They have so many. Or as soon as we come out with something new, they want them. They want him. And then they want to one up their buddy who's trying to get them also. But maybe you're. Maybe me and you are friends and you're on a plane right now and you don't have access to the Internet and he does, and he's trying to buy all the quantity I have of this, maybe four or five, six pairs. So you can't get them just to one up your friend. So there's a little bit of that competitive aspect that goes on and customization. We put gold on them. We put silver on them, on the crowns, on the washers. I mean, we've done so much stuff, I can't remember half.

[Interviewer]

And you're not even like. You haven't got to a point where you'll flip flop like that. Is it. That's the best flip flop I'm gonna make.

[AG Gregoroff]

No, no, I'm.

[Interviewer]

What are you. Version what, 27?

[AG Gregoroff]

I'm never happy with what we do. There's always something better. There's always a better version.

[Interviewer]

And you're getting so technical. Like, it's. You're looking at the angle of the V and how the angle of the V fits on the foot. Yeah. And whether it's a V or a circle or. Or. Or a different cut. Right.

[AG Gregoroff]

I'm looking at how the flip flop's going to wear over time, depending on the different environmental conditions that that person's going to have it in and the different environmental conditions that we've seen. Our early pairs start to come back. So the early gens, before they ever failed. I already recognize how we can make them better. We've made them better. We've made them better, you know, on and on and on. And now we're at the point to where I have a pair I've been testing for like seven years now. It's like a Gen 12 or something. I've had them forever. I'm still testing them. We don't use any of the type of leather. We don't use the shape, the con. None of the really fabric of that pair do we use anymore. But I'm still in the middle of testing them because they last for so long. The only thing you can really do to mess them up, drag your feet. Your dog will chew them up because they're real leather. That's about it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. My dogs haven't touched my. My flip flops. I don't know if I told you the story or not. The last time I was here, you were generous enough and gave me a pair of elephant. Black Elephant, One of your best sellers, right?

[AG Gregoroff]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Black Elephant with black elephants straps.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So those two combinations. And so you gave them to me. I wanted to be grateful, so I wore them right away. And you said, just FYI, you're going to get some black dye on your feet. Well, you also were very GRA gracious to me and put me up in the Trump Hotel. And so I decided that night I was like, man, this is a huge bath. I'm going to have a bath. Okay. Did I tell you this?

[AG Gregoroff]

No, I forgot. I got you a sweet at the Red Trap.

[Interviewer]

The bath is white.

[Podcast Host]

Very, very white.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. Really nice.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I get in the bath, I have a great bath. I drain the bath. I look into the bathtub, and they are black footmarks

[AG Gregoroff]

everywhere.

[Interviewer]

And I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I take the soap, I get on my hands and knees, and I rub the black marks out of the white bathtub. I didn't get them all out.

[AG Gregoroff]

That's funny.

[Interviewer]

I was petrified. I was like, oh, my God, the Trump Hotel is going to call ag. They're going to be like, what the hell did this guy do to our bathtub?

[AG Gregoroff]

That'd probably be the least weird thing that one of my friends has done

[Interviewer]

in their oh, my God bathtubs. It was just insane. Anyway, those shoes are those. Those flip flops have gone everywhere. They've gone to Africa with me. They've now broken in. I really like. I really, really like them, man. You know?

[AG Gregoroff]

Thank you. So. It's so individualized, too. So my buddy Dan, he'll wear Them and he'll get a little bit of rub off. A little bit. I could wear them. I don't get any. It just depends on the acidic acidity of your sweat, your skin, your braces.

[Interviewer]

It's funny you say that, because I asked Jonesy, I said, jonesy, did you. Did you get black feet? And she's like, no, none.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. And there's nothing. It just. Just what happens, you know, you can.

[Interviewer]

I had black feet for weeks.

[AG Gregoroff]

You could get that from, like, Nikes and shoes also, but you're wearing socks, so you tend not to notice it as much. And there's just nothing you could do about that. And it's small, you know, it's. It's a natural. Natural minerals, sure. And did you see that video that we posted on how the elephants get their different colors? No, it's on there. It's on our Instagram. But it talks about.

[Interviewer]

This is your leather.

[AG Gregoroff]

The leather.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

So, like, as an elephant lays on, like the, the bank of a river or.

[Interviewer]

Where are you sourcing the elephant from?

[AG Gregoroff]

Most of it's from South Africa, but primarily Zimbabwe.

[Interviewer]

And.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, yeah, those are the two. Those are the two spots.

[Interviewer]

And you're dying a lot of your elephant too, right?

[AG Gregoroff]

None of it. I have zero. I've never died a piece of elephant. Well, I actually, I tried painting it black once in the early, early days, but it all comes that color, and this is how it gets that color. So as it's going through, like, its natural life, it starts to absorb minerals and nutrients from the earth into its skin. And then when it goes to the tanning process, a lot of those organic materials are removed, and what's left behind is the trace minerals. And those trace minerals react with the tannins, the tree bark.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so you're saying in the tanning process, the. That elephant skin produces that color? That elephant leather changes color?

[AG Gregoroff]

Correct. Yeah. And wood's a. A little bit of an example, but not a great example, because most wood is kind of like wood color, a little bit darker, a little bit lighter. Maybe there's some reds or whatever. But if you look at a tree, the bark like you look at a tree, you're like, I, I don't know what's going to look like. You cut the tree open, you throw a little oil on there and that, the rings of the tree, the texture tree.

[Interviewer]

Same thing with the leather.

[AG Gregoroff]

It does that with the leather. Yeah. And there's some enhancing what they'll do. And I could show you this video afterwards. There's this crystal stone that they'll use and they'll polish it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's what Christie does.

[Podcast Host]

Christy does with the alligator.

[AG Gregoroff]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

It's amazing.

[Podcast Host]

It changes it to just like pool.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. And there's no chemical. There's no, there's no chemical they're adding during that process. It's just solely the burnishing process that's causing that.

[Interviewer]

But how do you make your. The consistency. Right. Your black flip flops are consistently the same color. Black.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Is that just the.

[AG Gregoroff]

The that comes to what we buy. So not only do we use the rarest leathers on earth, we only buy the best of those rarest leathers. So I'm. You're not going to find any exotic leather better than what we have. You know, like, like I've told you previously, we hold two, two world records over all the big fashion brands. Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Christian Dior, all those guys. And that pair of flip flops there on the wall, the white pair.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

That's the world record.

[Interviewer]

That's the Himalayan. Himalayan crocodile. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

We're.

[AG Gregoroff]

We started to set out to break the record again last year, but we had so much going on that we wanted to let it to sit for a little while. And then we're going to go and retarget it again probably next year and we'll do like a ten thousand dollar pair and we'll add gold or something cool to it. I want to get maybe like a pirate coin or something that we can put on the crown. Something really cool, something really unique. But we've had man, man killing elephant. We've had men eating crocodile. We've had. We've had a couple hippos. Hippos obviously kill way more people, so we've had a few hippos and those. The thing with that hide is it tells a story that nothing else on earth can tell. Yeah, you can't get that from anywhere else. You could go to a Louis Vuitton, you can buy a python bag, you could buy a crocodile or alligator bag, but there's no personality in them. They grow up in these tubs, they grow up in these ponds with rounded edges. And they grow them up just long enough so that they're. They're big enough, but not old enough to where they start fighting and really competing against each other.

[Interviewer]

No, because the leather needs to be perfect.

[AG Gregoroff]

Perfect. Yeah. These guys are really, really anal. And, and what you're buying is it almost looks identical to synthetic.

[Interviewer]

Dude, I need to. When, when you decide to finally go to Africa, do Your South Africa hunting whatnot. When we, when you explore into Zambia. There's a croc farm in Zambia at Scissorsongwe that we went into the breeding area. I'm telling you, you would yourself like hundreds of monsters.

[AG Gregoroff]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Monsters.

[AG Gregoroff]

Scary creatures.

[Interviewer]

13, 14, 15 footers.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. Those crocodiles everywhere. Scary. Here's a, here's a, a bone from the armor on the back of a piece of alligator.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

After this, we'll go in the shop, I'll show you this gigantic 13 foot alligator. It's the biggest we've ever seen. It's huge.

[Interviewer]

Huge. You've got the whole skin, whole thing.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's gigantic.

[Interviewer]

So tell me about, let's go through some skins. Elephant, obviously use a lot.

[AG Gregoroff]

Elephant's the number one most popular. And it's so durable. It's beautiful. The, the grain, the texture, the suppleness. There's no downside to elephant except it's extraordinarily expensive to get. Okay. And difficult.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Rhino.

[AG Gregoroff]

Rhino. We've only had, I think, two pieces. Again, it's really hard to get, it's hard to get through all the cities tags. It's hard to get out of the country. And really like a lot of these, like boot makers and stuff, these small custom boot makers, you got to go through a weave of those guys to try to get. Those are the only other guys.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

The only, only rhino I would think that you would get would be a customer who says, I've got some rhino. Yeah, it's my personal rhino.

[AG Gregoroff]

Exactly. That's exactly.

[Interviewer]

I'll send it. I'll send you a panel, make a couple of flip flops, make a couple of wallets.

[AG Gregoroff]

We had a guy that was getting divorced. He needed some money and he's like, my wife's gonna take it, you know, if, if, if I don't sell it. So he sent us some pictures.

[Interviewer]

Well, don't, don't send, don't tell me his name because he probably wasn't allowed to sell it.

[AG Gregoroff]

But we picked it up and it's, I mean, it's stunning. It's, it's incredibly beautiful. And it's one of those things that you're never gonna have ever again. And then we wound up, we were able to get a polar bear. And a polar bear, you have to have like a special tribal license.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[AG Gregoroff]

So we had to be partnered with these Inuit guys that were. And we got a piece of a seal too. Like a seal fur.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

And we're friends with some of the guys from the, the state here that are well, we're acquaintances with some of the guys from the state here that work for the. The Department of Wildlife, the Nevada Fish and Game, and we always.

[Interviewer]

We.

[AG Gregoroff]

We have really good relationships with the importers, obviously, and we know the guys at the highest level for the CITES import. So we're always making sure we're following the law, and then we always run everything by them, too, especially with that tribal stuff, because it gets tricky. You don't want somebody to kick, and then later on they find out, okay, everything was cool. You were allowed to have this.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

So to save ourselves from any of that trouble, we preemptively kind of share all of our stuff. And they're. They're always impressed with what we have.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. Giraffe.

[AG Gregoroff]

A lot of giraffe. Giraffe is quite easy to get.

[Interviewer]

Just the leather. Not skin on, not hair on it.

[AG Gregoroff]

Not hair on, no. Just a little bit of kind of like a suede, but. But not hair on.

[Interviewer]

Good for flip flops. Better for wallets. What.

[AG Gregoroff]

What's best for wallets? It's good for flip flops, but it's good for a pair of flip flops that you're gonna wear out to, like, a nice dinner, a wedding. You don't want to take them into the mud, into the ocean. You're just gonna mess up such a beautiful. It's almost like a.

[Interviewer]

Like a suede.

[AG Gregoroff]

You said beautiful suede couch. You're not going to sit on it wet and dirty, you know, you're not gonna let your dog on it.

[Interviewer]

Jonesy's got some giraffe coming.

[AG Gregoroff]

Does she? She has quite a few pairs. And then our. Our hit this year, which is freaking huge, was zebra.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. You made a couple of zebra wallets.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, well, we've made tons of zebra wallets. Flip flops, slides, everything.

[Interviewer]

But you had sk. You had hair on.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

How does that work on a flip flop?

[AG Gregoroff]

It works really well. It doesn't. It's almost like when you have the. The hair on rugs in your house, like the. Like the cowhide. Those don't. At least the ones I own, they don't kick off any hair. They don't shed.

[Interviewer]

But with the abrasiveness of your foot, though, you would think that the heel would.

[AG Gregoroff]

Eventually it will. Yeah, eventually it will. And the patina you create where your foot is like, that's a beautiful thing. You want. You want that? You want that?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think it would look cool.

[AG Gregoroff]

The areas where your foot's not touching will. Will maintain the hair and the strap Will maintain the hair. But again, it's a pair you wear out to like a wedding or to a barbecue and just show up all your friends. The, the, the hide we have out there now. So we're really picky with. With zebra. It's really hard to get good zebra because it gets so. It gets so. Just destroyed in the, in the skinning process. The best one we've ever had is out there right now. We actually got it from Rogan. So Rogan has a. Owns archery shop named Archery country in Austin. And then attached to that shop, there's a. There's a. A taxidermy shop. And they had it in there and they called me up. They're like, hey, this has been sitting in here, you know, can you guys do anything with it? And I said, send me some pics.

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[AG Gregoroff]

Take a look at it. And I was like, that's nice. Let me see the back. Let me see the, the flesh side. They flipped it over and I was like, send it. And it's so nice. I don't know how they, how they got it or where they got it from, but it's beautiful.

[Interviewer]

We may have some contact somewhere. You can get some, some good zebra. Like you can find it. Very. Like, it would be the easiest one to find.

[AG Gregoroff]

It is, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

Well, it's easy to find quote. But to be at the quality we demand.

[Interviewer]

Gotcha.

[AG Gregoroff]

You know, and even what most guys would grade as a grade A, it'd be like a great C for us. You know, just it's not, it's not the quality of which we demand.

[Interviewer]

Stingray.

[AG Gregoroff]

A lot of stingray, but stingrays.

[Interviewer]

Where does the stingray come out of?

[AG Gregoroff]

Most of it comes from like Indonesia, Asia. Some of it comes out of Florida. Everything we have is hard to get. And everything we have is getting substantially harder to get. Stingray means the price of stingray has gone up like three times. It's so expensive now because just the sourcing, it's hard to get. And then the premier stuff. The premier stuff is even harder to get.

[Interviewer]

What's premier stuff?

[AG Gregoroff]

Look at the best quality.

[Interviewer]

The stingray.

[Podcast Host]

Tough to get nowadays.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's tough to get. And the quality we demand is so obnoxiously high. So you can get small. You can get small stingrays off like ebay. They're. They're everywhere. Right, okay. But we want gigantic stingray that are flawless. And these are coming out of countries,

[Interviewer]

but you seem to. That's it. But gigantic stingrays, it looks like based on prior conversations and you show me. You're only getting one flip flop out of them, Right. Because you're getting the. That diamond. Yep.

[AG Gregoroff]

Right in the middle. So out of this portion we're going to use, we want just big, beautiful, strong nodules all the way around. Oh, that's right.

[Interviewer]

I remember.

[AG Gregoroff]

And they need a match on each side. So the left and right need to match both in thickness. So you can't have one on the left that's smaller, one on the right that's bigger, you know.

[Interviewer]

Oh, all right. So stingray, you've got ostrich, right?

[AG Gregoroff]

We have ostrich. We. We have a lot of crocodile, a lot of alligator.

[Interviewer]

What's something that you bought? Reindeer slippers.

[AG Gregoroff]

Oh, my God. We solved winter for everybody. We. We figured out winter.

[Podcast Host]

How the.

[Interviewer]

Did reindeer slippers come as an idea through your brain?

[AG Gregoroff]

God, I don't even know. I seen the hide and I was like, you know, because I got beaver mittens in my closet that my. My buddy made for me, and it doesn't get cold enough where I go to. To really utilize them. But I thought this would be cool if these were flip flops. And we've. We kind of experimented before with like rabbit, but when you cut up rabbit, you're getting hair everywhere. You might as well throw a sack of fur around your shop because it's getting everywhere no matter how careful you are. And the reindeer is no different. So the reindeer makes a gigantic mess. So this Christmas, I think our number one seller, or it was really close, was reindeer slippers. Everyone got them for their girl. A lot of guys got them for themselves. I got my gorilla pair. And they're so warm. They're so warm. You walk around beaver. We've had some beavers. We've had beaver tail before, too, but it's real oily. It's hard. It's hard to really work with. We could do beaver slippers. We just don't have. I mean, I guess we have. We have a source for everything. There just needs to be a high enough demand, then we can start bringing in all the.

[Interviewer]

There wasn't a demand for reindeer slippers. Let's be honest.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, we had to create it for sure. We had to create it. But the reindeer is so soft where the. The beaver is nice, but it feels glossy. It's nice. It feels water resistance 100%. And the reindeer feels more inviting to your foot standing on it feels more inviting.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[AG Gregoroff]

We did do some badger. We did one pair of badger for a customer. Those were. Those were really, really nice. The the foot fur on them was so, so thick.

[Interviewer]

I can imagine. What else? What other leathers? What have we missed?

[AG Gregoroff]

So elephant rhino.

[Interviewer]

You don't do buffalo, you said because it's too stretchy.

[AG Gregoroff]

We've done a little bit, but yeah, not, not a lot. We done some lizard, eagle rays.

[Interviewer]

No iguana.

[AG Gregoroff]

No iguana. They're usually too small. And we can make wallets and key fobs. But I want to make something that you can match. You know, you can have a wallet, a belt. We've been doing a lot of belts this year.

[Interviewer]

Oh, cool.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, the belts are really, really.

[Interviewer]

That's what you. I'm gonna put you on the spot here and go for our conservation one event. We shouldn't do a matching set of something. Let's do it instead of just a pair of flip flops.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah, our belts are heavy duty. If, if my grandpa had a belt like this when I was a kid, I'd be killed. It's so heavy. It's so heavy you could pull a tank with this thing.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[AG Gregoroff]

So I wanted to make a 100 year belt where it's going to last forever. Pass it down, you know, like an heirloom quality. We stitch them by hand. We use thick stitching. We're going to move to a high quality, like, really heavy duty stitching machine. Otherwise we won't be able to fill the quantities and the demand for the belts.

[Interviewer]

Because right now, like I saw you, like hand stitches.

[AG Gregoroff]

Hours and hours. Yeah, we do one belt.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[AG Gregoroff]

And then we'll charge 700, 800 for a belt, which is a lot for a belt. Yeah, but it's the same as Louis Vuitton. And they're not using the materials we're using and they're not using the craftsmanship. We're using the leather that we have. And you know, your guys are a little bit different to listen to this because they are, you know, they're, they understand more about, you know, the, the environment and things like that. But most humans have never seen the leather in that shop behind this wall. Most humans have never seen that leather before. And we, we as a society, we say things are expensive. Well, what's expensive? Gold's expensive. Diamonds are expensive. They're rare, but they're not. We could, when we go to the casino, we're gonna see a million girls and every one of them will have a diamond. They're everywhere. We'll see. Every guy will have a gold necklace on. You won't see a single person in town with anything like what we have, unless they're a toehold customer anywhere in the world. So we're not for everybody. And purposely so you can, you could go buy a pair of flip flops at the gas station for $7. If that suits your need, do it. We're not for you. But if you want something that's extremely rare, that's high quality, and it's made by somebody who's a fanatic when it comes to details, especially with the footwear, then we're the type of, you know,

[Interviewer]

and it's also important to you from a sustainable use perspective, right?

[AG Gregoroff]

The amount of money we spend, hundreds of thousands of dollars that go directly back to park funding, you know, and I wish there was a tighter way to really track every dollar that goes back, but it's Africa. You're not going to, you know, but I could tell you it's better to send money back there and have them spend it how they see fit than it is to send no money back there. Because, you know, from, from our, from our standpoint, the way it looks to us is, you know, you can I get a villager who takes his last couple dollars and buys a sack of seeds and builds a garden by hand. And then his wife goes down in the river and she has to face the crocs and she brings a bucket back on her head with water and they pour it in their garden and they, you know, they water their little garden. And then at night, an elephant comes by and just destroys all of that and destroys the little bit they have in their life. And, and he might come out to defend his little garden and the elephant kills him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. 100.

[AG Gregoroff]

And then the family's destitute. And then, then the village wants to get together and kill all the elephants instead. You know, the, the, the game wardens or the government may come and say, hey, we're going to pay you a small fee for your husband's life or for your garden. And then a hunter is going to come by in a couple days and he has a couple depredation tags and he might kill these couple, just kill the ones that, you know, damage your stuff, leave the rest of them alone, you know, and you can speak to this better than most people, but similar to how pigs are a nuisance animal in Africa, in, in Texas, they, they root and destroy. And a lot of people, at least the guys we deal with over there, they say elephants are the same way, except they're a bulldozer. They'll come through and they'll destroy a village. They'll destroy trees, they'll destroy everything. And if there's too many of them, it's too harsh on the land. The land can't recover.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[AG Gregoroff]

It's not suitable for gardening. They kill people and they just overpopulate and then they wind up all dying because they've oversaturated a certain area. So being able to manage that is a very, very tricky thing, you know, and nothing should ever be brought down to the levels of extinction. But they're at the opposite end of the spectrum.

[Interviewer]

100%. No. 100%. Well, I think you've given some people some thoughts too. You know, a lot of people hunt. A lot of people, you know, get that resource. Typically it's only the meat, but there's leather involved and you can do so many cool things with leather.

[AG Gregoroff]

So many. And it. And we're going the opposite direction of everybody else. Everyone's going cheap, everyone's going big corporation. Everyone's going synthetic, synthetic plastic, plastic, plastic. We're at the other end of the spectrum. We're taking a long time. If you buy a pair of flip flops from us, you're going to wait like three or four months, you know, but the details that we're going to put into that high, we don't, we don't lay out a hide and say, okay, here's how many pairs we can get. We don't do that. We lay out the hide and I look at it carefully and I say, this section will get me the best pair. And then when that pair is done, I'll look at the hide with fresh eyes and say, here's the next best cut right here. And it might be in the middle of the hide, but it doesn't matter because the goal is to make each pair the best that they could possibly be. You know, or, you know, someone's gonna get the corner, someone's gonna get the edge. It's not so social. It's not going to happen with us. You're going to get only the best cuts.

[Interviewer]

Well, if they're interested in getting a pair of flip flops to hold.com shop

[AG Gregoroff]

to hold dot com.

[Interviewer]

But the best way to get a hold of you is DM you through Instagram.

[AG Gregoroff]

Yeah. Follow us on Instagram. It's, it's, it's T O E H O L D. Just Google, you know, Google us. If you just Google to hold, we'll pop up all over the place. We have a Twitter, we have a Patreon, but Instagram is really our hub. Message me on Instagram. Tell me you know that you heard us on this podcast and ask any questions you want. We're quick to respond. And another thing too is it's not just a product is we love engaging with our customers. We have the funniest customers. One of the best part of Toehold is how funny our customers are. We have the coolest people and the funniest customers. And we respond to you right away. Message me at midnight. I'm going to respond. Message me at three in the morning. I'm going to respond. You know, if you have a question, just ask it. It's really, really easy to get all the answers.

[Interviewer]

Well, dude, I appreciate the friendship. I appreciate the tequila.

[AG Gregoroff]

I appreciate you.

[Interviewer]

And yeah, good seeing you. We'll do this again. All right?

[AG Gregoroff]

Have us. Have a fun time in Vegas.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks, boss.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening. As always, leave a review, share it with your friends and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.