You do not want shoe polish, which is temporary, but "shoe dye" which is permanent and, once dry, does not rub off on shorts. Shoe dye is available at almost any shoe repair shop, usually in a selection of colors, but nearly always available in black. This is the best way to restore worn areas of a black leather saddles. Also good for restoring leather toe straps or dyeing straps a hard to find color (like green for my green and gold Arthur Caygill).
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca> wrote: Well, Kiwi sells two kinds of shoe-polish leather conditioner. One is a saddle soap and the other is neutral shoe polish without cleaning agents.
I bought some of the clear neutral shoe polish at Target ($2.29 for 28g) and tried it out on my brooks saddles. Compared to Proofide, the neutral polish leaves a dull (not shiny) lustre on the saddle but it seems to work just fine. Now that they've jacked up the price of Proofide, watered down that stuff, and they've shrank the tin size ($10 for 40g), it's at least 3x cheaper than Proofide and the leather seems just as happy with Kiwi neutral polish as it does with Proofide.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA