Although the industry is generally aware of ceramic, very few brands have truly introduced ceramic materials into leather hardware.

As a manufacturer that has long served international brands in metal and new-material components, YIBI has clearly felt in the past two years that more and more design teams are showing interest in “Ceramic,” yet projects that actually apply Ceramic to leather hardware are still in their early stages.

From our co-explore with brands, we have identified several key observations:

1. Designers are aware of Ceramic but have no application experience

Most designers know Ceramic are used in:

• High-end watch bezels
• Consumer-electronics housings
• Fine jewelry settings

But when it comes to leather hardware, they ask us:

• “What are the performance characteristics of Ceramic?”
• “Can Ceramic be used for buckle appearances?”
• “Will it be too heavy?”
• “Will it break?”
• “What structural aspects should be avoided?”
• “Can it achieve matte or frosted finishes?”

→ This shows that market interest is rising, but leather-specific ceramic solutions are lacking.

2. What is ceramic in the first place

Zirconia Ceramic are not traditional clay pottery, but a class of high-performance industrial Ceramic developed through modern materials science.

Their core material is refined zirconia powder, which is stabilized and then sintered at high temperatures to form a structural material with high strength, high hardness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance.

Zirconia was initially used in medical devices, cutting tools, and precision machinery—fields requiring extremely high durability and strength. In recent years, it has also entered the consumer goods sector, being applied to watches, jewelry, and bag hardware that require high aesthetic quality and material stability.”

After sintering, zirconia achieves extremely high hardness and can be polished through precision grinding to obtain a gemstone-like luster. Like all Ceramic, it naturally resists corrosion and never rusts, maintaining exceptional stability in both appearance and durability over long-term use.

3. Core advantages of Ceramic in leather hardware

From both manufacturing and design perspectives, ceramics offer significant advantages in leather hardware:

• Extremely high hardness and wear resistance: Ceramics are much harder than common metals and alloys and resist scratches from tables, keys, or storage surfaces, keeping components pristine over time.
• Lightweight design potential: For strap buckles, badges, zipper pullers, and other small accessories, Ceramic are lighter than metal of the same size, helping reduce overall bag weight and improving comfort.
• Premium texture and visual differentiation: Ceramic can present a jade-like polished shine or matte frosted finish, creating a unique visual focal point within limited accessory space and increasing brand identity.
• Suitable for precision mini parts: High-temperature sintering and precision polishing enable complex structures and accurate dimensions, supporting innovative design possibilities.
• Corrosion-resistant and aging-resistant: With natural anti-corrosion properties, Ceramic require little maintenance over long-term use and retain material stability, ideal for high-end or limited-edition bags.
• Color stability: Ceramic color comes from the material itself, not from plating or coatings. It will not fade or oxidize with use. By adding colored zirconia pigments, Ceramic can be produced in many colors. Beyond classic black and white, they can also be made in pink, yellow, coffee brown, blue, and more—either soft and subtle or vibrant and striking. With suitable blending, marble-like effects can also be created, expanding design possibilities for leather hardware.

Additionally, Ceramic PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) is a processing method often overlooked by brand designers and product developers. By depositing a PVD thin film onto the ceramic surface, it can achieve a metal-like texture while further enhancing the wear resistance and surface hardness of the hardware. This ensures that high-touch areas remain flawless even after prolonged use, providing brands with greater durability and reliability. The hardness of ceramic with PVD coating is 3–5 times that of stainless steel.

4. Potential disadvantages of Ceramic in leather hardware

• Fragility under impact: Although hard, Ceramic may fracture when subjected to strong impact or dropping, making them more suitable for decorative or non–load-bearing parts rather than structural load-bearing components.
• Higher processing and mold cost: Ceramic components require high-temperature sintering and precision grinding. Mold and processing costs are higher than conventional metals, making them less friendly for small-batch or low-cost products.
• Design thickness limitations: To ensure stability and durability, thin or sharp-edged ceramic designs require caution and may limit certain complex shapesand size.
• Longer production cycle:Sintering, grinding, and polishing processes have to have a fixed time to secure the quality, requiring earlier planning for rapid-iteration or mass-production scenarios.

5. Exploring ceramic application directions in bag hardware

Although Ceramic have processing limitations, choosing the right positions and component types in bag hardware can avoid these drawbacks and maximize their advantages.

• Bag feet: Bag feet typically do not endure sudden high impacts but require wear resistance. Zirconia ceramic feet provide superior scratch resistance, durability, and color stability while offering a clean and refined look suitable for luxury bags.
• Decorative structural parts: Including logo plates, small badges, and bar-shaped decorations. These parts bear little load and face minimal direct impact. Zirconia’s hardness and stable luster highlight design details and significantly elevate the overall visual quality.
• Non–load-bearing buckle housings: Such as flap buckles, magnetic snap covers, and rotating buckle shells. The internal structure still uses metal to ensure functional reliability, while ceramic is used on the exterior to enhance luxury and wear resistance and ensure color permanence.
• Zipper pullers and small charms: Can be polished, matte-finished, or textured depending on brand style, adding unique tactility and visual interest. Their small size and low load allow Ceramic to shine without high breakage risk.
• Strap or decorative accents: Such as rings, geometric blocks, or small pendants. The lightweight nature of Ceramic makes them suitable for small areas where visual impact is desired.

Additionally, Ceramic PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) is a often-overlooked processing method. By depositing a PVD thin film onto the ceramic surface, it can further enhance the wear resistance and surface hardness of the hardware while maintaining the original luster and texture of the ceramic. This ensures that high-touch areas of the hardware remain flawless even after prolonged use, providing brands with greater durability and reliability.

6. Insights from market demand and ceramic characteristics

With the consumer and brand trends shifting from 2023 to 2025, we have observed a clear movement from our work with international brands: the leather goods industry is seeking new material languages and differentiated carriers.

For the past decade, bag hardware has relied heavily on metal — visually direct, mature in processing, and cost-predictable. Now brands face three emerging needs:

1）Seeking new materials that extend brand storytelling

Luxury brands are increasingly looking to establish their own “material memory”, such as:

Titanium → technological and futuristic

Carbon fiber → lightweight and high-performance

Similarly, the leather goods industry needs a material capable of telling a dual narrative of “technology + aesthetics.”Engineered ceramics, especially zirconia, naturally offer this potential:

Stability and high performance

High safety with no chemical reactivity

Unique optical qualities (soft glow, jade-like texture)

A built-in language of precision, luxury, and technology

This potential has already been validated in high-end jewelry and watches. For example:

The Chanel J12 watch series uses high-tech ceramic for its case and bracelet, representing the brand’s “modern elegance.”

In jewelry, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bvlgari, and Cartier have all incorporated black and white ceramic elements into select high jewelry collections, expressing a minimalist, modern, and lightly technological design language.

These brands demonstrate that ceramics can build a distinctive material narrative and cultivate consumer recognition of high-performance non-metal materials.

Today, the leather goods industry is entering a similar window of opportunity —
many design teams want to explore new-material storytelling, but lack a mature supply chain to support small-batch development.
This is exactly the gap that YIBI fills.

2）Consumer aesthetics shifting toward softer, more premium textures

High-gloss metal finishes are no longer preferred by all consumers. Aesthetic trends shift toward:

• Matte
• Soft-glow
• Neutral tones
• Understated but refined looks

Ceramics’ natural matte and delicate luster (especially zirconia) align perfectly with this “soft aesthetic,” and even appear more futuristic than metal. Thus, ceramics do not replace metal — they meet a new aesthetic need that metal cannot express.

3）Brands prioritizing “long-lasting texture after prolonged use”

Whether luxury bag buckle or wearables, scratches, fading, and oxidation are common issues. Ceramics offer a different solution:

• Zirconia does not fade
• The surface does not dull with use
• High hardness and excellent wear resistance
• Even high-touch areas remain attractive

This satisfies the strong market demand for “long-lasting beauty,” especially among mid- to high-end brands.

In short: The market is looking for a material that can “tell a story, fit emerging aesthetics, and remain durable long-term.” Ceramic happen to meet all three.

However, due to processing challenges far greater than metal, industry adoption is slow. This is why — Everyone is interested, but few brands have achieved real mass production of ceramic leather hardware.

YIBI is transferring its zirconia ceramic expertise from jewelry into leather components to explore new trends:

• Combining metal and ceramic structural engineering
• Helping brands validate concepts starting from small batches
• Integrating feasibility → cost → process → mass production
• Bringing Ceramic into real leather hardware applications rather than leaving them at the conceptual stage.

7. YIBI: Extending experience from ceramic jewelry to cross-material manufacturing

Ceramic are not new to YIBI.

In our early years, we began with ceramic jewelry. At the time, the industry had extremely limited zirconia processing capabilities — sintering cracks, unstable dimensions, and uneven polishing were common issues.

YIBI spent years working with material scientists, mold engineers, and craftsmen to refine powder formulas, mold precision, and every polishing pathway, achieving strict standards in ceramic dimensional accuracy, polishing consistency, and sintering yield.

Many senior craftsmen still at YIBI grew alongside ceramic production — They created watch bracelet links, jewelry components, and bag-chain accessories; made ceramic components within 2mm; produced rings requiring over ten grinding steps; and re-fired failed sintering samples late into the night.

This “ceramic jewelry era” gave YIBI advantages that are hard to replicate:

• 16 years of ceramic manufacturing experience
• Mastery of precision small-component tolerances
• Ability to produce complex structures and metal-ceramic combinations
• One of the few manufacturers in China that is an expert in both Ceramic and stainless steel and combines them structurally

Therefore, when discussing the potential of Ceramic in leather hardware, we are not starting from zero — we bring over a decade of ceramic experience into a new field.

8. Reflection: When material is no longer just functional but becomes brand expression

Will Ceramic, like stainless steel once did, become a new material in the leather goods industry?

Will they bring a new tactile language to high-end bags in the next three to five years?

Will brands be willing to invest longer validation cycles for material innovation?

As metal becomes increasingly homogeneous, can Ceramic become a point of differentiation?

There are no standard answers, but the trend is clear: Material innovation is becoming the next starting point of brand competition, and YIBI is actively exploring the possibilities of applying Ceramic in leather hardware.