I noticed a small mark on the arm of my sofa; I tried to gently remove it using a damp tissue, and to my surprise, this created a small 'light colored' circle. The brown leather color came off onto the tissue. This is a two-tone finish, with a darker 'top coat' on top of a lighter foundation. I then tried to 'blend' that circle to make it look more natural, but ended up making a bigger 'obvious' mark. See photo 1 below.
Later, I tried again to 'blend' the mark, and achieved some success, but it still looks lighter than any other area of the sofa. At the same time, I tried to blend in a mark close by. See photo 2 below.
I contacted the sofa vendor, and they pointed out that this is caused by 'body oils' removing the protective coating on the leather. Sure enough, I tried the same 'damp tissue' technique on other areas of the sofa, and could not remove the color, but to me that's still something of a defect, since it's pretty obvious that a sofa is going to have body contact. This is only a 3 year old sofa and gets VERY light usage. After a few more discussions, they agreed to replace the leather on the arm. However, when they sent the replacement (for 'approval' prior to having it installed), I felt it was so far from the original appearance that I'd end up with something worse than the current problem.
So at this point, I'm tempted to try to 'touch up' the affected area, with some kind of brown color that I could 'swirl on' randomly, and end up with a very slight darkening of the area - and then apply something to the entire area to 'fix' the dye in place. Is this feasible? I'm thinking the hardest part of this is going to be matching the color. Thoughts? Should I hire a local expert?
Thanks for your help!