How is artificial leather made?

Naugahyde (sometimes abbreviated to Nauga) is a well known and established brand of artificial leather ("pleather"), made from vinyl polymer coated plastic. The product was developed by Uniroyal Engineered Products and is now manufactured and sold by a division of the same company, the "Naugahyde Company". Its name comes from the city of Naugatuck, Connecticut, where it was first produced. A marketing campaign of the 1960s and 1970s asserted humorously that naugahyde was obtained from the skin of an animal known as a "Nauga"; this is an urban myth.