Horween Leather Company offers an array of tannages using primarily cowhide and horsehide, and also using smaller quantities of calf and bison hides.

Isadore Horween (whose surname was originally Horwitz or Horowitz),[9][10][11][12] who had learned the leather business in his native Ukraine, lived just outside Kiev, immigrated to the United States in 1893.

In 1911, Isadore Horween developed and produced Aniline Chromexcel, one of the company's most traditional tannages.

[17][18] Isadore Horween had obtained the site, which remains the company's current location, by purchasing it from Herman Loescher and Sons tannery.

[19][20] In 1927, Horween Leather Company sold the tannery on Division Street, and consolidated its operations at North Elston Avenue.

[23] In 1985, Arnold Jr., Isadore's grandson, succeeded his father as Horween Leather Company's chief executive.

[2] The company's workers take raw hides, which arrive salted to prevent deterioration, trim them, and remove their hair with chemicals in an extremely large washing drum.

Its leather is used in a number of products including footwear, sports equipment, bags, belts, wallets, briefcases, suitcases, jackets, coats, and other apparel and accessories.

[2][7][17] As of 2003, 60% of the company's leather was used to make clothes, shoes, and accessories, and 40% for sporting goods such as footballs, basketballs, and baseball gloves.

[4] Horween Leather Company supplies leather shells for footwear to the Timberland Company, Alden Shoe Company (their largest cordovan customer; it became a customer in 1930, buying shell cordovan and other leathers), Cole Haan, Allen Edmonds, Nomad Goods, Brooks Brothers, Hanover Shoe, Chippewa Boots and Johnston & Murphy.

[28][15] Although footballs are often called "pigskins," they are made from Horween Leather Company-supplied steer hides that are embossed with a pebble pattern.

[7] Horween Leather Company's leather is also used to make National Basketball Association basketballs, made by Spalding[1] until 2021, and currently by Wilson Sporting Goods[31] On February 14, 1978, a driver making a delivery to Horween of a tanker truck filled with sodium hydrosulfide ignored signs and approached the wrong storage tank.

[34] The tank contained an acid chrome tanning liquor, and the resulting mixture immediately created a large amount of deadly hydrogen sulfide gas.

[34][37] The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company for failing to train employees in handling dangerous chemicals or in emergency evacuation procedures.