How We Score Wallet Brands

Last updated: 30 July 2026 · Rubric version 3.0

Every brand page on All The Wallets carries four scores. This page explains exactly how each one is calculated, what earns points, what earns nothing, and why some well-known brands score lower than their reputation suggests.

We publish this rubric in full for one reason: a score you cannot audit is worthless. If you disagree with a number, you should be able to read the criteria, check the evidence yourself, and tell us where we went wrong. If you feel like we've got a score wrong, then please email us at hello@allthewallets.com and we'll review the aspects you disagree with.

The four scores

Sustainability and Ethics, out of 100. How much a brand discloses and verifies about its materials, factories, workers, repairability and giving.

Warranty, out of 10. The actual published warranty terms for the brand's wallets, not its marketing.

Value, out of 10. What the buyer gets for the money, judged against directly comparable brands.

ATW Review Average. The mean of our own published review scores for that brand's wallets. This one comes from our reviews rather than from a rubric, and it only appears once we have reviewed at least two wallets from the brand. Below that, one review is an anecdote, not an average.

There are no letter grades. Numbers only, each labeled with its scale, because a "B" invites you to guess and a 74 out of 100 does not.

The principles behind every score

Five rules govern all of it. They explain most of the surprises.

Evidence beats reputation

Every point we award has to trace to something we found and can cite. A brand's reputation, its press coverage, and our own impression of its products earn nothing. If we cannot produce a source, the point is not awarded.

Verify in the certifier's directory, not the brand's marketing

When a brand claims a certification, we check the certifying body's own register. B Corp status gets checked against B Lab's directory. Leather Working Group claims get checked against the LWG certified supplier list. FSC claims get checked against the FSC certificate database.

This is a major source of lost points. Several brands claim leather from "LWG-certified tanneries" without naming a tannery, which means the claim cannot be traced and scores nothing. Others carry a carbon-neutral badge that does not appear in any certifier's register. We are not calling those brands dishonest. We are saying an unverifiable claim is not evidence, and treating it as evidence would make every score meaningless.

Disclosure is free, certification is not

Certification costs money. B Corp certification runs to thousands of dollars a year plus months of work, which puts it out of reach for a small independent workshop no matter how well that workshop operates. Telling people what your product is made of and where you make it costs nothing at all.

So we weight disclosure more heavily than certification. A small brand that names its tannery, publishes its workshop address and lists its full material composition can outscore a much larger certified competitor. That is deliberate, and it is the single biggest change we have made to this rubric.

Absence of disclosure scores zero

This is policy, not an oversight. Part of what these scores measure is transparency. A brand that publishes nothing about where its wallets are made earns nothing for manufacturing, even if the factory is excellent. We do not extend benefit of the doubt, because doing so would reward the brands that say least.

The practical consequence is that a genuinely good manufacturer who keeps quiet will score below a merely adequate one who publishes details. That is intentional. We can only assess what is disclosed.

The same rubric, applied identically

We do not soften criteria for small brands or tighten them for large ones. We do not adjust for how much we like the products. Each new brand is scored against the same calibration anchors as every brand before it, so the numbers are comparable across the whole site.

Commercial relationships never influence scores

All The Wallets earns affiliate commission when readers buy through some of our links. We have scored brands we earn from below brands we do not. No brand can pay for a score, a re-score, or a score removal. No brand sees its score before publication.

Sustainability and Ethics, out of 100

Six criteria, weighted by how much each one actually tells you.

Materials disclosure, 25 points

The heaviest single criterion, because knowing what a wallet is made of and who made the material is the most useful thing a brand can tell you.

Sub-criterion	Points
Named, traceable supplier, tannery or mill	10
Material types and grades specified	5
Material certification tied to that named supplier	5
Full composition disclosed, including backings, linings and hardware	5

The composition points matter more than they look. Plenty of wallets are not what the headline material suggests. Cork fabric is a thin cork veneer laminated to a textile backing, usually polyester. Vegan leathers are frequently polyurethane on a fabric base. A brand that tells you exactly what is in its product earns these points regardless of whether the answer is glamorous.

Named fabric mills and cork suppliers count exactly the same as named tanneries. We do not favor leather.

Third-party certifications, 15 points

Company-level certifications only. Material certifications are scored above, with the material they certify.

Certification	Points
Certified B Corporation	7
Climate Neutral or equivalent	4
1% for the Planet	4

All verified in the certifier's own register. A badge on a brand's website is not verification.

Manufacturing transparency, 20 points

Sub-criterion	Points
Named factories or workshops	10
Country published, but no facility named	5 (partial)
No location published at all	0
Information about workers or workshop conditions	5
Long-term or owned manufacturing partnerships disclosed	5

Third-party reporting of where a brand manufactures earns that brand nothing. Only its own published disclosure counts, because this criterion measures what the brand is willing to tell you.

Repairability and longevity, 15 points

Sub-criterion	Points
Repair program covering wallets	12
Design-for-longevity evidence, such as guarantees tied to repair rather than replacement	3

Repair programs only count where they cover wallets. One brand we scored runs an excellent repair service, but only for its luggage.

We do not score spare parts availability. A sewn fabric wallet has no separable components, so it cannot sell you a replacement screw, and penalising that would mark down a construction method rather than a repairability failing.

Environmental practices, 15 points

Sub-criterion	Points
Recycled or bio-based materials in the products themselves	12
Carbon reduction or offsetting with a named partner	3

We do not score packaging. It is a one-time, minor impact next to the product itself, and scoring it mostly rewards whoever writes the best copy about a polybag.

Giving and ethics, 10 points

A named, ongoing commitment with a stated amount or percentage earns full marks. Named but one-off campaigns earn partial credit. Nothing earns zero.

Warranty, out of 10

Four criteria, scored on the published terms rather than the headline.

Criterion	Points	What earns them
Length	4	Lifetime (4), ten years or more (3), three to nine years (2), one to two years (1), none or unstated (0).
Coverage breadth	2	Covers materials, workmanship and mechanisms or hardware (2). Partial coverage (1). Vague or heavily excluded (0).
Claim friction	2	No registration required and a clear published claims process (2). A process that exists but is awkward (1). No published process (0).
Honesty of terms	2	The fine print matches the marketing (2). Deductions where the homepage promises materially more than the terms deliver.

We always score the wallet warranty. Where a brand offers different terms by product category, the wallet and small goods tier drives the score, never the longer bag or luggage tier. A brand advertising a ten year warranty on luggage and three years on wallets is scored on three years, because you came here to buy a wallet.

The honesty criterion is where the biggest deductions happen. Several brands market a lifetime warranty that, read closely, applies only to certain models, excludes the components most likely to fail, requires a paid membership, or carries a replacement fee. We score the length generously where a genuine lifetime term exists, then deduct on honesty where the marketing overstates what most buyers actually get. A brand can therefore score full marks for offering lifetime coverage and zero for how it advertises it.

Value, out of 10

Criterion	Points	What earns them
Price position	3	Where the wallet range sits in USD against directly comparable brands.
Build per dollar	3	Materials and construction relative to the price.
Longevity backing per dollar	2	Warranty and repair program relative to the price.
Pricing honesty	2	Stable, transparent pricing. Deductions for permanent "was/now" markdowns, inflated list prices, or constant sitewide sales that make the recommended price meaningless.

Pricing honesty separates brands more sharply than anything else here. A brand that holds its prices steady and confines discounts to genuine seasonal events scores full marks. A brand running a permanent sitewide sale, where the list price is a number nobody actually pays, scores zero. This is not a judgment about whether discounts are good for you. It is a judgment about whether the printed price means anything.

Value scores are marked provisional. Price data moves, and quality per dollar involves editorial judgment we are still calibrating. Treat these as our current best assessment rather than a settled figure.

What these scores deliberately do not measure

This matters more than anything else on the page.

The rubric measures disclosure, verification and commercial conduct. It barely measures whether the wallet is any good. Only the build per dollar criterion touches product quality directly, and that is three points out of a possible 120 across the three rubric-scored dimensions.

So a brand can make an excellent wallet and score modestly here, because it has not published its supply chain, or has not sought certification, or discounts too aggressively. Conversely, a brand with thorough documentation and a mediocre product will score well. When you see a low sustainability score, read it as "this brand publishes and verifies less than its competitors," not as "this is a bad wallet."

For our assessment of whether the wallet is actually good, read the review. That is what the ATW Review Average is for, and it is deliberately kept separate from the rubric scores.

How the scores are produced, and our use of AI

We use AI research tools to produce these scores. An AI research assistant works through the rubric brand by brand, searching the brand's own site, the relevant certification registers and independent sources, and returns a criterion-by-criterion breakdown with a source URL behind every individual point awarded.

Every score is then reviewed by a human editor before publication. That review is not a rubber stamp. Individual criteria get challenged, and the score is either defended from the published rubric and the cited evidence or corrected. Several scores have been changed this way, and several rubric rules exist specifically because a first attempt got something wrong and we fixed the rule rather than the one brand.

Two commitments follow from this.

Nothing publishes on general knowledge. Every point traces to a source we found during the research pass. Where information genuinely could not be verified, we record that alongside the score rather than guessing, and each scorecard carries an internal confidence rating.

Corrections are made publicly and promptly. If we have a fact wrong, tell us and we will check it. If a brand has published information since we scored it, or gained a certification, or changed its warranty, we will re-score it. We would rather be corrected than be confidently wrong in public.

Scored dates and re-scoring

Each brand page shows when its scores were last calculated, for example "Scored July 2026." Warranties change, certifications lapse and get renewed, and prices move. A score from eighteen months ago may no longer be accurate, and the date tells you how much weight to give it.

We re-score a brand when it publishes materially new information, when its warranty or certification status changes, or when we change the rubric itself. We may not always be told when something changes, which is why we aim to rerun every brand's scoring at least every six months.

Rubric changes trigger re-scoring of every brand already scored, because a score is only comparable if every brand was measured the same way. That is expensive and it is the point.

Revision history

We publish this so you can see the rubric is not fixed, and so a brand scored under an earlier version can see what changed.

Version 3.0, July 2026. Certifications reduced from 25 points to 15 and narrowed to company-level certifications only. Materials disclosure raised from 15 to 25 and split into four sub-criteria, including a new one for full composition disclosure. This shifted weight away from certifications that cost money and toward disclosure that costs nothing, after we concluded the previous weighting structurally disadvantaged small independent makers.

Version 2.0, July 2026. Packaging and spare parts availability removed as scored criteria. Packaging because it is a minor one-time impact that mostly rewards good copywriting. Spare parts because it penalised sewn and one-piece construction for a design characteristic rather than a repairability failing. Their points were redistributed into recycled materials and repair programs respectively.

Version 1.0, July 2026. Initial rubric.

Frequently asked questions

Can a brand pay to improve its score? No. Not directly, not through advertising, not through an affiliate partnership. Brands do not see their scores before publication and cannot request changes on any basis other than a factual correction.

Why did a brand I like score badly on sustainability? Almost always because it publishes less than its competitors rather than because it does worse. The most common causes are claiming a certification without naming the certified supplier, and not publishing where the wallets are made. Both score zero under our rules.

Does this rubric favor big brands that can afford certifications? It used to, more than we were comfortable with. Version 3.0 cut the certification weighting and raised the disclosure weighting specifically to address that. Under the current rubric, several small independent makers outscore larger certified competitors, because naming your supplier and publishing your workshop address are free.

Why does a brand advertising a lifetime warranty not score 10 out of 10? Length is only four of the ten points. The rest covers what the warranty actually includes, how hard it is to claim, and whether the fine print matches the advertising. A gated or fee-bearing lifetime warranty loses points on honesty even while earning full marks on length.

Do you penalise vegan or non-leather brands? No. Named fabric mills and cork suppliers earn the same points as named tanneries, and bio-based materials earn full marks under environmental practices. What we do assess is whether the brand discloses the full composition, since cork fabric and most vegan leathers are laminates with a textile or polyurethane component that often goes unmentioned.

How is the ATW Review Average different from the other scores? It comes from our own hands-on reviews rather than from desk research, and it reflects the product rather than the company. It appears only once we have reviewed two or more wallets from the brand.

I think a specific score is wrong. What now? Tell us which criterion and why. Point us at the evidence. If you are right, we will correct it and note the change. That is how several of the rules on this page came to exist.

All The Wallets has been reviewing men's wallets since the mid-2010s, working from a personal collection of more than 500 wallets. We buy most of what we test. Where a brand supplies a review sample, we say so on the review. We earn affiliate commission on some purchases made through our links, at no cost to you, and it has no bearing on any score on this site.