What unique resources and capabilities does Denmark possess that have turned it into the hub of the global fur industry? 

The headquarters of Kopenhagen Fur is an exercise in incongruities. It is a slice of 1960s brutalist architecture dropped into the homely Copenhagen suburb of Glostrup. It is also the nerve center of a much-hated industry, nestled in the heart of European political correctness: it is the home of the Danish Fur Breeders' Association, the world's largest fur-auction house, and the heart of expertise about animal skins. As Hollywood is to films and Silicon Valley is to information technology, Kopenhagen Fur is to peddling the pelts of fluffy creatures.

Denmark is home to 1,500 mink farmers who together rear about 17.2m of the mammals a year--about one-fifth of the world's supply. It also produces much smaller quantities of other furs such as white fox and chinchilla. Danish food companies produce the world's most nutritious mink food, a mephitic, fishy concoction. Danish design firms drive fur fashions. And the auction house sells fur from all over the world: last year it auctioned 21m pelts and had a turnover of 2.1 billion ($2.8 billion).

Kopenhagen Fur has so many Chinese buyers at its auctions-about half of the 600 who typically attend-that it has a Chinese restaurant on the premises, produces a special Chinese edition of Fur Times, and even puts up discreet notices on how to use Western lavatories. Inside the building pop-up shops do roaring trade in expensive watches and jewellery. Outside, Chinese fur traders in brightly coloured tracksuits wreathe the place in tobacco smoke. In all, Kopenhagen Fur accounts for about a third ofDenmark's exports to China.

How has Denmark turned itself into the hub of the global fur industry? Mink farmers point to the quality of their animals-which command a 20% premium over ones bred elsewhere-and to the advantages that keep that quality high.Denmarkis an agricultural superpower, so the farmers have a constant supply of offal and fish waste to feed to the mink: their fur loses its lustre unless they are properly fed. Most Danes are inured to the animal-rights passions that make mink breeding impossible in other European countries, and its fur business has somehow escaped the attentions of foreign activists. The farms welcome visitors. Danish women happily wear fur coats in public.

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