Updating a classic

We are The Bag Company and we love classic leather bags with their timeless designs and natural materials so we wanted to combine these with the latest sustainability technologies to bring them up to date. 

For this first project, we chose the weekender for its simplicity and flexibility. Whether you’re at work, at play, or just out and about it’s the perfect bag that will be able to carry everything you need. 

We based our design on the three basic principles of our brand: simplicity, flexibility, and sustainability. 

Our bag will be made from full grain cow leather with an aniline finishing to create the most natural, soft and supple handle. This also allows the leather to retain all the characteristics of the natural hide making each bag unique.

The biggest update we made to our bag was how our leather is made. Whilst leather is a beautiful natural material, its journey from raw hide to finished leather involves significant usage of salt and water. We wanted to reduce the former, a pollutant whilst preserving the latter, a precious resource. 

Simplicity

We decided not to the mess too much with a classic and stuck to a single undivided interior. We added pockets on each of the interior sides (one of them zippered) for putting away small and frequently accessed items.  

Our bags are not only designed to last, but will tell their own stories through the unique patina that is acquired over time. The bag pictured was one of our first prototypes and started out with a Pantone shade called Friar Brown that we have selected for The Weekender. It has since developed its own patina with daily use over the past 18 months in all sorts of places under all kinds of conditions and uses. Your bags will have their own stories to tell as you use them over time. 

Flexibility

Our one piece leather handles have been designed for maximum comfort. The fold over design creates a rounded edge and the double thickness provides a perfect cushioned grip which will not dig into your palms or shoulder. The length has been ideally set so that the bag can easily be carried or slung over the shoulder. The bag can also be used with the included adjustable shoulder strap.   

The bag has an internal capacity of 40 litres but for those moments when you need a little bit more room, unbuttoning the wings can squeeze out that extra bit of space to fit one more thing or to accommodate an awkwardly shaped item. This makes this the perfect bag for any occasion.   

Sustainability 

Manufacturing of leather has steadily been shifting to developing countries for decades due to increasing labour and environmental costs.

Salt is the oldest and still one of the most used ways of preserving raw hides for transportation. A container of 500 salted hides requires up to 10,000 pounds of salt, with the salt taking up to a third of the space.

Litehide technology preserves without salt and reduces weight by dehydration allowing up to 3,000 hides in the same container. This lowers shipping costs, carbon emissions and wastage.

Salted hides also need to be cleaned before processing which can require as much as 4 gallons of freshwater per pound. The tainted wash off can contaminate local waterways and farm land if not treated properly.

So, switching to Litehide compared to traditional salted hide for our leather can eliminate the salt pollution and save on water usage. 

Take the next step

With your help, we will be able to fund the purchase of Litehide and the hardware needed for the manufacturing of The Weekender. We have already lined up sources for all the raw materials and a manufacturing partner who is ready to go.  

With each bag, we will be stopping over 5 pounds of contaminated salt potentially entering a local land or waterway and save over 20 gallons of water. Combined with using a chrome free tanning process, we believe this will make it one of the most environmentally friendly leather bags on the market.

So we hope that you will take the next step with us to make the world a little cleaner, one trip at a time. 

What happens next?

We hope to be able to ship bags out to you within eight weeks after the end of the campaign.

Once the campaign has ended, we will begin the procurement of hardware and the purchase of Litehide. This is expected to take four to six weeks. Once the raw materials are on hand, tanning, construction of the bag plus packaging and distribution will take another three to four weeks.

Should the campaign be funded significantly before the end of the campaign, we will look to move up the procurement of raw materials and may be able to ship bags out earlier. Please keep an eye out for updates.