Where are the bags made?
Our brand specialty is bringing community designs together, so we make our products at various factories depending on the best price/quality ratio. This depends on the weight of the product and its destination market. If we are making something a design that is primarily for our UK members, then we will choose a factory located in Italy or Portugal over in Canton China so the cost of development and shipment is reduced because of proximity from the market. For our extremely popular models, we shift the production to the bag city of the world - Canton in China or Toyooka in Japan so it can be close to the world class bag brands and most importantly their parts suppliers like zippers and metal parts. These strategic and flexible arrangements, combined with our sale methods using our mailing list, allow us to control our cost better. But being able to communicate with our members directly via email and messaging services cuts our R&D costs sharply - we never really had an unsuccessful launch because they all started from members' requests. Recently, our US member base has been growing at a much higher rate and we are considering making some popular models in Chicago so we can cut down on our time to market.
Our bags are all handmade, and our procurement processes ensure our suppliers practice the fair wage and eco-friendly policies that we also employ ourselves. We're striving towards carbon neutrality and that is something we're working towards in our journey. We love our jobs and we hope you love the bags!