Affiliate disclosure & how we make money

The short version, so nobody has to hunt for it: Hide & Thread makes money through affiliate links, it costs you nothing extra, and it never changes what we recommend. This page is the longer version, in plain English, as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission asks sites like ours to provide.

How affiliate links work

When you click a product link on this site and go on to buy, we may earn a commission from the retailer. That is the whole business model: the links are how the research gets paid for. It is important to say clearly that this is a material connection — we have a financial interest in the links we publish — and that is exactly why the rest of this page exists, to explain why that interest does not bend our recommendations.

Amazon Associates is our default retailer

Hide & Threadis a participant in the Amazon Associates program, an affiliate advertising program. In the program's own required words: as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon is where most people actually buy a wallet, so it is our default link. Our outbound product links are routed through a cloaked /go redirect — a tidy internal link that forwards you to the retailer with our affiliate tag attached. It is a housekeeping detail, not a tracking scheme aimed at you, and if we ever add other affiliate networks, this page will say so.

It costs you nothing extra

The commission is paid by the retailer out of its own margin. You pay the same price you would pay walking into Amazon directly — the affiliate link does not add a cent to your total, and it does not change your checkout in any way. If a commission ever came out of your pocket, we would tell you; it does not.

Commissions never change a ranking

This is the line that matters most. Which wallets we recommend, and in what order, is decided before money enters the picture and is never adjusted for it. We will rank a $10 card sleeve directly next to a $100 full-grain bifold and let each one win on merit — capacity, leather grade, warranty, and cost-to-own — even when the cheaper pick pays us less or nothing at all. No brand pays for placement, a higher position, or a kinder verdict, and we accept no sponsored placements and no free units or review samples. How a ranking is actually built is spelled out in our methodology.

Buyer-first: we point you to the better option

Because Amazon pays us and a brand's own store usually does not, you might expect us to always steer you to Amazon. We do not. When buying direct from the maker is genuinely better for you — a longer warranty, a leather grade or color you cannot get on Amazon, a fairer price, or a personalization option — we say so and point you there, even though it earns us nothing. The recommendation answers your question, which is "what should I buy," not ours.

About the prices you see

Prices are pulled live from the Amazon Product Advertising API and are stamped with the date you see them. Prices move constantly, and the figure at Amazon's checkout is always the one that counts. If our price data for a product goes stale — older than a 48-hour freshness window — we hide the number and show "Check price" instead, because a blank we are honest about is more useful to you than a confident number that may be wrong.

That is the whole arrangement. For how picks are chosen and scored, read our methodology; to start with our flagship guide, see the best leather wallets; and if anything here is unclear, get in touch or email us at info@hideandthread.com. Hide & Thread is published by Type 5 Marketing LLC.