Here is a copy and paste portion of the link about the history of Jews and the hide and fur trade:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/leather-industry-tradeBOHEMIA AND MORAVIA
Buying hides from the local noblemen was one of the main tasks of the Jews, as stipulated in the charters on which their protection was based; purchasing the skins of small animals from peasants and from butchers was an important side line. Jews also imported and exported hides. At the end of the 16th century, Marcus *Meisel was granted the monopoly of the leather trade in Prague (Bondy-Dworsky, no. 1068). In 1629 the gentile tanners of *Tachov included a clause in their charter forbidding any of their number to finish hides for Jews because the Jewish leather trade was undercutting the tanners. When the Jews were expelled from *Litomerice in 1541, one man had to be allowed to remain because he alone was capable of supplying hides and tanning bark to the tanners (H. Ankert, in: H. Gold, Juden und Judengemeinden Boehmens, 1934). In Prague in 1729 there were 70 Jewish hide and leather merchants. The Jews who settled in Kremsier ( *Kromeriz ) in 1670 after their expulsion from Vienna were permitted to deal in "various crude and finished leather" ( *Frankl-Gruen , Kremsier, 1 (1896), 109). Leather and hide merchants frequented the large fairs, mainly the one at Breslau (Wroclaw), which was a center for the import of hides from Eastern Europe.
Jews were also active in tanning itself; since it was one of the trades outside guild control it was open to Jews, and after the Thirty Years' War tanneries became one of the most important Jewish economic outlets. When the Moravian guilds protested against the renewal of Jewish privileges in 1659, one of their arguments was the claim that the methods of tanning employed by the Jews were unsatisfactory (W. Mueller, Urkundliche Beitraege (1905), 27–28). Jews were permitted to settle as tanners in localities otherwise forbidden to them. Most of the tanneries were the property of the local nobleman and were leased to the Jewish randar (see *Arenda ), who was sometimes not a tanner himself but the employer of one. However, some Jews had their own tanneries. In *Polna the community as such leased the tannery from the municipality (1681) and in *Kolin the community bought the tannery (1724; R. Kestenberg-Gladstein, in: JJS, 6 (1955), 35–49). The council of Moravian Jewry issued several ordinances concerning the leather industry: it forbade the attempt to gain a monopoly on buying hides and other merchandise from a local nobleman (I. Heilperin, Takkanot… (1963), 83, no. 250), yet in another ordinance (ibid., 150, no. 449) it forbade anyone to buy in a locality where someone else had a monopoly by the terms of his contract with the local nobleman. It was considered the duty of the *Landrabbiner to protect Moravian Jews from the competition of buyers from other districts (ibid., 285, no. 485). The council did not hold tanners (nor butchers) in high esteem: in 1709 it ruled that they could be members of the council only if they also held public office in their home community.
Early in the 17th century the Hapsburg rulers, true to their mercantilist policies, were interested in encouraging tanning. A survey that they carried out in Moravia in 1719 revealed that there were two tanneries owned by Jews and 79 leased by Jews from local noblemen; six of them employed one gentile laborer each; the lease of 13 of these tanneries was connected with the lease of a distillery; only ten tanneries in Moravia were run by gentiles (V. Zacek, in: JGGJČ, 5 (1933), 175–97). In Bohemia in 1724 there were 80 Jewish tanners and furriers (grouped together under one heading) and 26 tanneries were leased to Jews; 252 Jews were occupied in the leather industry; 146 were hide and leather merchants, and 106 were engaged in tanning (R. Kestenberg-Gladstein, in: Zion, 9 (1944), 17; 12 (1946/47), 49–65, 160–89, and passim). In the 18th century tanning and trading in leather were often connected. One specialty of the Jewish leather trade in Moravia was the kid trousers which, finished and colored in various ways, were an important feature of the peasants' national costume (B. Heilig, in: JGGJČ, 3 (1931), 373). The tanners were the first craftsmen in the Hapsburg Empire who were permitted to hire open salesrooms (Verkaufsgewoelbe) in Vienna (1781). This offered several Jews the opportunity to settle there.
These tanneries continued to flourish in the 19th century, and when new chemical methods were introduced many of them became important factories, as in *Golcuv Jenikov and *Kosova Hora (Amschelberg). Jews also founded new factories where no tanneries had existed before: e.g., in *Pilsen where the first factory producing Moroccan-style leather was established in 1829 and in *Brno where a factory producing French-style leather was founded in 1846. More than 20 of the leather factories in Bohemia in 1863 were run by Jews, and a large part of their export trade was with the United States. Leather production remained a Jewish craft for many years. After chromium tanning was introduced (1884) Jewish factories led the move to modernization. Between the two world wars Jewish firms played an important role in the production and export of leather goods (Jews of Czechoslovakia, 1 (1968), 419–81)
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my earlier thread wasn't aimed at your comments 