Heritage Leather Jackets Made For Real People

Before we were Real Simons, we were a village workshop in Shandong that spent more than a decade making leather jackets for major American heritage labels. This is the story of how we finally started putting our own name on our work.

This is Post 1 of our three-part official brand series. Today we cover who built Real Simons, why we exist, and where we sit in the market. Post 2 will take you inside our workshop and our leather. Post 3 will cover our global partnership and sizing work for international markets.

For more than forty years, a workshop in Huangjia Village, Shandong has been making leather goods. For more than a decade of that, our jackets have sold under some of the most respected names in American heritage menswear. The labels inside were not our own. Real Simons is what happened when we decided to change that.

Our founder is Xijie — legal name Shuai Hongyun, English name Simon. For more than twenty years he has worked inside Amekaji, American casual, and motorcycle wear: trading, sourcing, and selling leather goods to a serious customer base. That twenty-plus years spans his trader years, his decade-plus producing for other brands, and the seven-plus years he has spent building Real Simons.

After years of moving other people's jackets, he decided to make his own. He went looking for a workshop that could meet his standards.

(One quick note on his name: in Mandarin, "Simon" sounds like Ximen. Xijie wears his hair long and is often mistaken for a woman from behind, so friends started calling him Big Sister Ximen. It contracted to Xijie and stuck. He prefers it in English content because it carries cleanly across languages.)

Xijie's search eventually led him to Huangjia Village — literally "Huang Family Village" — near Laizhou in Shandong Province, and to the Shuangyang Leather Goods Factory.

Founded in 1981, Shuangyang began with tanning and leatherwork under Director Huang's family, then grew into a village-based workshop rooted in the local community. It is not a corporate tannery in the Western sense. It is closer to a community-run workshop. Most residents share the Huang surname, and most of our artisans do as well. The craft is the village's collective trade.

At Shuangyang, Xijie met Director Huang, the third-generation factory head. Shuangyang had been doing international OEM work since the 1990s, though across a varied mix of clients rather than a single major label. They decided to work together.

A Decade Of OEM, And A Brand Of Our Own

For more than ten years, Xijie and Director Huang have run Shuangyang as the OEM producer for several top-tier American heritage menswear brands — names anyone serious about the category would recognize. Contractual terms prevent us from naming them. That OEM business continues today, alongside Real Simons, as a separate line of work.

That decade-plus of OEM calibrated us to international heritage-menswear standards on materials, pattern, stitch density, and finishing. It gave us the experience and the capability to produce, at scale, a jacket we would be willing to put our own name on.

More than seven years ago, we launched the consumer-facing brand: Real Simons.

Why the name is "Real Simons"

This name is not a marketing gimmick; it stems from our founder’s name and his philosophy.

"Simons" is formed by adding an "s" to the founder's English name, "Simon"—pronounced "Simon's" (belonging to Simon). It is akin to a name label stitched onto a jacket. "Real" represents the principle we steadfastly uphold: doing things that are authentic and genuine. Placing "Real" before "Simons" serves as a public pledge—a promise of authentic creations crafted by our own hands.

What We Stand For

Real Simons is built on three non-negotiable principles. We will go into detail on how each works in practice in Post 2, but stated simply as our values:

• Leather direct from the tannery. Shuangyang is inside the brand, not a supplier to it. No intermediaries.
• Specialized division of labor. Cutters cut, sewers sew. Most of our artisans have more than thirty years in the operation they own.
• Strict leather rejection standards. Hides that pass general industry QC routinely fail Real Simons' internal grade.

Our founding thesis is based on three principles: good leather should not have to be luxurious. Horsehide is our proudest material — see our leather selection for details.

Where We Sit In The Market

We respect the bar set by Japanese and American repro houses and do not try to out-purist them. Our goal is different: take that technical bar and engineer a path for ordinary buyers to reach it — the same level of leather and finishing, at a price a working customer can live with.

Xijie describes our long-term vision in one line: the Uniqlo of Amekaji. Heritage-grade leather jackets at honest prices, at scale.