I'm restoring four blog posts about Rogers and Safariland Kydex into a single post. They're not gunleather but they are relevant because Rogers single-handedly destroyed demand for large scale production of gunleather -- beginning with his technology's takeover of businessman Neale Perkins' Safariland product line. Neale is a businessman not a holster enthusiast so he saw no harm in the switch for purist reasons, any more than Remington did by introducing the Nylon 66 rifle that had a polymer stock (molded of nylon 6/6, in fact) vs a timber one.
There were many thermoformed plastic holsters before Rogers'; it wasn't the introduction of Kydex that inspired Bill nor even his famed tale of losing his issued S&W from his issued Hank Sloan holster (he just needed to tighten its screw, or add a proper strap and Buchimer did that very thing in the '70s). It was his realization that he could use a recent learning for him about vulcanization to bond the leather and plastic layers so that the heating of the laminate not only didn't loosen the glue's bond, it created it.
Following in the footsteps of the likes of JB he chased the dollars on offer from designing and making retention holsters -- when that role was rightly reserved for the gun makers who took their eye completely off the ball at that point. And came up with the striker pistols that were even LESS safe in the hands of a man/woman who took them from the officer.
The first one I encountered as a teen was this one that was a thoroughly engineered crossdraw that nevertheless was advertised as a side draw. 1965's JC&G (Bill's was a decade later by his telling) is featured in the final chapters of the second Edition of my book Holstory available at www.holstory.com:
Read more in my book titled "Holstory -- Gunleather of the Twentieth Century -- the Second Edition" that is available at www.holstory.com and printed for you/shipped to you in USA.