Sep 24, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
Michael Newton spent 15 years at Nike watching startups pitch new materials and fail. Now he's the one pitching. Michael is CEO of Qorium, which grows real leather from cow cells in weeks instead of…
Michael NewtonGuestChrisHost
What you're talking about is, like, at the very core of what Corium is about.
We grow it using bovine cells in a very controlled process that we've innovated, a tissue engineering, synthetic biology platform that we've built, and that allows us to make real beautiful leather that is just like leather.
A little hard to see on the podcast, but I wish you could touch it and smell it and, you know, all that good stuff.
But people have been trying for 50-plus years to replace leather, and there's a number of reasons why they do that.
Actually, uh, leather, as wonderful material it is, it's actually quite difficult to work with.
It has a number of downsides, uh, you know, from a manufacturing point of view, from a final product point of view, and then of course from a supply chain traceability impact point of view.
And so people have been looking to take that wonderful market, wonderful material, and find, you know, new ways to, uh, kind of tackle it.
But nobody's been able to be successful because they haven't been able to replicate those properties and improve upon those properties.
At Corium, we believe that our technology allows us to not just replicate leather, but actually improve upon it, 'cause we can make real beautiful leather, but then we can do some great things, right? We make it in these very precise rectangular sheets, right? That enables you to have perfectly uniform product that makes you to have a beautiful set of shoes that's consistent, a great car seat, a handbag, right? All these things that can actually make it, you know, better, more elevated experience for consumers.
And then on top of it, when you're working with a highly predictable material that is consistent and rectangular, you can then just manufacture in a much more easy way, much less waste, right, highly replicable, right? So you just do these things that allow you to really improve upon what is leather, and that's what we think Corium is able to uniquely do, and we're well on our way to doing that right now.
What you're talking about is, like, at the very core of what Corium is about.
We grow it using bovine cells in a very controlled process that we've innovated, a tissue engineering, synthetic biology platform that we've built, and that allows us to make real beautiful leather that is just like leather.
A little hard to see on the podcast, but I wish you could touch it and smell it and, you know, all that good stuff.
But people have been trying for 50-plus years to replace leather, and there's a number of reasons why they do that.
Actually, uh, leather, as wonderful material it is, it's actually quite difficult to work with.
It has a number of downsides, uh, you know, from a manufacturing point of view, from a final product point of view, and then of course from a supply chain traceability impact point of view.
And so people have been looking to take that wonderful market, wonderful material, and find, you know, new ways to, uh, kind of tackle it.
But nobody's been able to be successful because they haven't been able to replicate those properties and improve upon those properties.
At Corium, we believe that our technology allows us to not just replicate leather, but actually improve upon it, 'cause we can make real beautiful leather, but then we can do some great things, right? We make it in these very precise rectangular sheets, right? That enables you to have perfectly uniform product that makes you to have a beautiful set of shoes that's consistent, a great car seat, a handbag, right? All these things that can actually make it, you know, better, more elevated experience for consumers.
And then on top of it, when you're working with a highly predictable material that is consistent and rectangular, you can then just manufacture in a much more easy way, much less waste, right, highly replicable, right? So you just do these things that allow you to really improve upon what is leather, and that's what we think Corium is able to uniquely do, and we're well on our way to doing that right now.
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