Hard to believe

Wow. Friday, October 8^th marks the second anniversary of www.blokesbags.co.uk. And what a two years it has been!

There are all sorts of (well founded) theories on the survival of new businesses in their first three years which if I recall correctly fail at the rate of 50 per cent in the first year and a staggering 95 per cent in their first five years.

Well we have got through the first 24 months, which is amazing given that at the outset we knew nothing about men's bags, we knew nothing about setting up an e-store and we knew nothing about website optimisation.

If as the saying goes, what a difference a day makes, imagine if you can, what a difference 730 days make!

It has been an incredibly bumpy ride and survival has been in no small part thanks to a heady mix of sheer bloody mindedness, desperation and an indefatigably supportive wife and co-director.

Somehow we managed to enter a nascent market just as it was gathering pace and we remain grateful to the geeks who continue to supply the world with a plethora of must have gadgets – must have gadgets that simply must have something to carry them around in. Bring on the necessity that is bags for men!

In the two years we have been trading in men's bags we have seen the product develop from an important, but non-essential travel item that might be used for holidays once or twice a year before being confined to the top shelf of the wardrobe for the rest of the year, into something that is carried by the majority of men on a daily basis.

In the world of women's handbags, fashions come and go, so much so that if the manufacturers had their way they would need replacing seasonally every spring/summer and every autumn/winter, whereas thankfully thus far the trend in the men's bag market has been one of need and practicality.

Ten years ago, few of us carried mobile phones, few of us carried personal music players and even fewer carried laptops, but as technology has continued to develop the must have products have continued to shrink both in size and weight, but not yet quite small enough to be carried in pockets.

Thank you Steve Jobs of Apple, his company's commitment to the must have gadget industry might be making millions for him and his shareholders, but it is also fuelling associated industries and one of them is the manufacture of man bags and as a result men's bags have developed not as a catch all for everything, but to meet a specific need.

Inside a man bag you will find compartments and pockets for every need – to protect your precious mobile phone, to keep secure your iTouch or stop your netbook/iPad getting scratched and once they are safe, there is space left over for your pens, pads, combs, cameras, wallets and other items that used to cause unsightly bulges in your pockets.

When we started out we struggled to find suppliers of bags for men, there were a handful, but they were in the minority and they were hard to find and even those that were there, were unsure of the market's durability and as a result kept supplies strictly limited.

Now not only are there many more suppliers, some have switched the majority of their production from women's to manufacturing bags for men and are doing very nicely thank you.

For our part, we are about to roll out a redesigned web store at www.blokesbags.co.uk and launch a new 'brother' store at www.mensbags.co.uk to mark our landmark anniversary and we also have another in the pipeline to cater for the top end of the market at www.designerbagsformen.co.uk

We have gone from a range of less than 100 man bags to soon to be more than 400 different bags for men in every shape and every size made of a wide variety of materials from canvas and hemp through PU to our mainstay, leather.

We do expect designs to change and we do expect a continuing shift in emphasis from bags with handles, such as briefcases, to bags carried over the shoulder such as messenger bags and men's shoulder bags, but we also expect to see more wrist bags:
No longer are men self-conscious about carrying a bag in fact instead of being the butt of jokes , he is more likely to be asked where he bought it from .And that is a big change from just two years ago.

Wrist bags or men's handbags, call them what you will,  have been in vogue in the rest of Europe for decades and now they are becoming more popular in the UK as men become more confident and more accustomed to carrying their own bag with all that they need inside it.


As we said when we launched www.blokesbags.co.uk men's bags are the future, because there should only be one bulge in your suit.