Wotancraft’s description of itself is it’s an industrial-chic atelier for leather camera bags & accessories with a battle-worn military aesthetic. It’s founded in Taipei, Taiwan back in 2009 and more known for its camera bags.

What makes this review different is that Wotancraft doesn’t sell Sharkskin anymore. However, the craftmanship and quality hopefully remains regardless.

Pricing

As my strap is not available anymore, it would be better to go to their website to get an up-to-date pricing. What I did notice though is that pricing remained similar.

Packaging

The item arrived very quickly. Upon receiving the parcel, it was just in a parcel box with minor padding inside. I would not be concerned about the crumpled corners as I believe it just rained during its transit.

I was surprised by the level they go through to package the strap. The strap is inside this small suede pouch and It’s sealed by velcro fasteners. The bottom of the pouch has a leather strip with their logo on it.

Below the pouch was a keychain. It’s a nice touch overall.

Now the best part, the strap itself. The strap is sealed and protected by a plastic wrap. This is one of the nicer experience I had with opening a package.

Thoughts

For the shark skin, I bought three in different colours: black, red and green. All of them are very similar in quality meaning they are consistent with their work.

The shark skins are well made. The leather is soft already so there’s no break-in required compared to other leather. You can easily squeeze it to fit a lug width 1mm smaller since the leather is soft. This is very similar or even easier to NOMOS’ shell cordovan in terms of ease in fitting in a small lug width.

One thing that i noticed is that compared to their recent offerings, the stitches are thin. It seems to be hand stitched, but the pattern begs to differ. However, the irregularities of the stitching direction would say it is hand stitched. One thing that I was also intrigued with the red strap at is that the top stitching is red, but the bottom stitching is black. One thing I am sure of though that it’s not saddle stitched.

Buckle is your normal buckle design, but it’s a thicker one and reminiscing of a Panerai buckle.

The other one that I bought from them was a brown shell cordovan. I bought this one a few weeks after the shark skin in hopes of replacing the strap in my Lange. It arrived in the similar pattern as the shark skin, comes in a box, inserted inside a pouch and also enclosed in plastic.

However, after receiving the strap, I noticed something that might not bother a lot. The buckle side of the strap was exposing the spring bar.

This doesn’t seem a lot, but that’s a good 1mm off. Anything can grab in that gap and pull the spring bar. I contacted Wotancraft with the issue and they were more than happy to repair it under warranty. I had to pay for the post and wasn’t reimbursed for me sending it as well. However, the repair only took a week or so and was sent back to me. I wasn’t notified that it was sent back and I just received it in my mail.

Final thoughts

Overall, Wotancraft comes recommended from me 8.5/10. Communication is excellent and customer service is not bad either. A happy customer in the end.

You can check their offerings by visiting this link.