I work as a prep cook in a Japanese restaurant and I use this leather/suede strop to maintain our restaurant’s 12 knives of various edge grinds (both asymmetrical, symmetrical, and convex-, concave- and wedge-type edge profiles). First, I use the darker side (rough suede) to conduct a preliminary cleaning/stropping of each knife (20x laps per 1.5″ of each blade along the length, from heel to tip); then, I use the lighter side (smooth leather) to do a fine stropping of the blade to hone it to a keen edge (15x laps per 1.5″ of each blade along the length, from heel to tip). I do this each night for 6x nights a week to maintain the edges of our knives (garasuki, honesuki, santoku, gyuto, cleavers and French-style kitchen knives) as long as possible before we have to use whetstones to re-grind and actually sharpen the edges.I’m quite happy with this product when I purchased only one (1x) instance of it in MAR 2017: the construction and fit-and-finish was quite good, and it seemed to be made in USA. The handle was comfortable to hold because the filling/padding of the handle was solid yet still soft to the touch. Overall construction and stitching seemed decent and durable (like in the current picture).However, when I recently purchased the 3-pack version a few months later in JUN 2017 (I’m teaching my kitchen staff how to strop/hone their own blades, so we need more strops), the quality of each strop was decidedly less so: each strop is shorter by 0.50″; the stitching seems less robust; the end-wrapping material is thinner and the cuts/edges are misaligned with the stitches; the handle is made of thinner synthetic material without any padding/stuffing.But despite all that, I was able to use one (1x) of these new strops to successfully service all 12 knives in one night, so perhaps my complaints about the new 3-pack are about merely cosmetic aspects.Nonetheless, this 5-star review is for the single-instance purchase of this product; if the seller could guarantee the better quality of this product similar to the one I received in MAR 2017, then I would definitely purchase it again.