Ernesto Moos (right) has received the latest Frank Johnston Award for services to the hide, skins and leather industry. The presentation was made at the annual dinner of the International Council for Hides Skins and Leather Traders Associations which is held annually in Hong Kong the night before APLF opens. Ernesto is one of the oldest members of the trade who are still actively engaged in the business and he was a friend of Frank Johnston and later his son Michael, both past presidents of the association.
He represents the fifth generation of his family and can look back on 170 years of industry connections to when his great grandfather first started out. He spent many of his school holidays in hide warehouses but still found time to represent Argentina in the Olympics, taking his place in the bobsleigh team in St Mauritz in 1948. These were the first Olympics to be held after WWII.
He moved his business to New York in 1949 but later moved on to Brazil, where he spent eight years. His final move was to Switzerland, in 1958, where he has remained ever since (apart from when he is travelling). His response when the award was announced: ‘I’m flabbergasted!’
In December 2005 he told Leather International that: I can now claim the title of the ‘oldest active in the international hide trade (for better or for worse).’ He admitted then that ‘in some weeks time I’ll reach the round figure of 80 winters and summers behind me.’
He is still actively involved with the ‘oldest hide trading name since the Moos name entered the trade with my great grand father Elias Moos in 1837’. The original Moos started his hide trading firm in Southern Germany. Later, Ernesto’s father, Sami Moos, took it to Argentina in 1922.
